E3 2018 - Microsoft Press Conference Discussion

[Andrew]

6 minutes ago, George P said:

If the goal is to release in 2020, since the lineup till then for the PS4 is covered, though we'll see.  Then you'll just kill any PS4 Pro sales flat out, and I don't know if they've sold enough to not worry about it, or maybe they'll just take a hit and forget about it.   But the goal is to make money, personally if I wanted to release a PS5 sooner, i'd kill off the base PS4, you've sold enough and made the hardware costs off of that back already.   Drop the PS4 Pro price to $299, and keep it plus whatever the PS5 ends up as going forward.    

PS4 has done what it needed to do, it got Sony back on top and made them profits again. The Pro won't be forgotten about when the PS5 launches and will see continued third party support just as every generation before has shown us.

 

Momentum and the success they've gathered for what's to come is far more important than worrying about a generation they've already won and accomplished what they wanted to do.

[+InsaneNutter]

When the next console generations drops what I think will happen is the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro will stick around and become the new base model.

 

So you will have the XB1 X and XB2 playing the same games and running the same OS, games will just look a lot better on the XB2, however the XB1 X will still play all the current games been released.

 

That gives owners of the original XB1 and XB1 S an easy transition path to play what will be current generation games, a cheaper XB1 X or a more expensive, but more future proofed XB2 (or whatever it ends up been called).

[George P]

9 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

When the next console generations drops what I think will happen is the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro will stick around and become the new base model.

 

So you will have the XB1 X and XB2 playing the same games and running the same OS, games will just look a lot better on the XB2, however the XB1 X will still play all the current games been released.

 

That gives owners of the original XB1 and XB1 S an easy transition path to play what will be current generation games, a cheaper XB1 X or a more expensive, but more future proofed XB2 (or whatever it ends up been called).

That's what I expect MS will do, I don't know if sony wants to follow along though, they seem to be fixed into splitting up console generations and would just add PS4 titles to PS Now and have you pay for that.

 

Doing it how you said is the best, as long as games play on the XB1X AND the newer XB2 etc, and you keep your whole library, it's fine to have these 3-4 year mid-gen hardware upgrades which give you better visuals but don't force you to buy them if you don't want to.

[dipsylalapo]

18 minutes ago, George P said:

That's what I expect MS will do, I don't know if sony wants to follow along though, they seem to be fixed into splitting up console generations and would just add PS4 titles to PS Now and have you pay for that.

 

Doing it how you said is the best, as long as games play on the XB1X AND the newer XB2 etc, and you keep your whole library, it's fine to have these 3-4 year mid-gen hardware upgrades which give you better visuals but don't force you to buy them if you don't want to.

Best for the consumer.....if Sony want to add the titles to PS Now and charge people, that would be best for their business  

 

It's interesting that alongside Phil mentioning that they're working on new hardware, he also said they're looking at streaming so it'll be interesting to see if they enhance Gamepass to include streaming of games to mobile devices. 

[+InsaneNutter]

24 minutes ago, George P said:

That's what I expect MS will do, I don't know if sony wants to follow along though, they seem to be fixed into splitting up console generations and would just add PS4 titles to PS Now and have you pay for that.

 

Doing it how you said is the best, as long as games play on the XB1X AND the newer XB2 etc, and you keep your whole library, it's fine to have these 3-4 year mid-gen hardware upgrades which give you better visuals but don't force you to buy them if you don't want to.

Although Microsoft have messed up in various respects this generation, they have laid all the groundwork software wise for a great experience going years in to the future.

 

All the work done for backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 and Xbox Classic games is going to benefit them in the years going forward. I'd expect this to continue with the next Xbox essentially been a hardware upgrade again, still running Windows on the x86-64 architecture. That would mean it's pretty much  easy to be 100% backwards compatible from day one without any streaming subscription requirements. Certainly a big deal for anyone who's invested £100's if not £1000's in to the Xbox ecosystem.

[George P]

2 minutes ago, dipsylalapo said:

Best for the consumer.....if Sony want to add the titles to PS Now and charge people, that would be best for their business  

 

It's interesting that alongside Phil mentioning that they're working on new hardware, he also said they're looking at streaming so it'll be interesting to see if they enhance Gamepass to include streaming of games to mobile devices. 

I think if they do expand on streaming it'll be tied to gamepass, but that's if it's the type of streaming we're thinking.

 

Right now you can stream from your xbox to your PC, and that's free, what if they just expand that to let you stream from your Xbox to your tablet/smartphone?    Now if it's true cloud streaming, then yeah, it'll be part of gamepass, so then anything on gamepass you'll be able to stream to anywhere, which is nice, as long as you have the connection for it that is.

[George P]

2 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

Although Microsoft have messed up in various respect this generation, they have laid all the groundwork software wise for a great experience going years in to the future.

 

All the work done for backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 and Xbox Classic games is going to benefit them in the years going forward. I'd expect this to continue with the next Xbox essentially been a hardware upgrade again, still running Windows on the x86-64 architecture. That would mean it's pretty much  easy to be 100% backwards compatible from day one without any streaming subscription requirements. Certainly a big deal for anyone who's invested £100's if not £1000's in to the Xbox ecosystem.

Yeah, it helps when you can keep all that library going forward, sure some people would tell you to keep the original systems connected.  Who has the space for that?  And what happens if that original Xbox finally breaks?  Or that 360 does?  Or 10 years from now the Xbox One you have breaks and they don't sell them anywhere?    It's best to keep compatibility going forward, it's best for MS to because the money is still made from the games and not so much from the hardware.   

 

It also allows newer gamers to go back and play those old hits 10 years later, maybe with some performance and visual bumps on the new hardware, which in turn gives some extra money back to the publisher/developer of that old game.   I think in that respect the BC program has been a huge success, counter to what any haters might say, I keep seeing post after post of people asking for title after title to be added, there's a huge demand for it.

[+LostCat]

5 hours ago, Andrew said:

All the signs point to a release sooner rather than later. Cerny is touring the devs putting together the hardware, the hardware itself is practically here and ready to go in the industry, Sony have said PS4 is entering the last stage of its life cycle, their game lineup is covering the next year and a half, and now we even have Microsoft and Bethesda talking about next-gen on stage. You don't do that if its a dot on the horizon.

I'd like to believe that (the PS4 Pro is a lame duck hardware wise.)

 

Gaming hardware outside of set top boxes just seems to be getting expensive so I'm not really convinced anything will show before 2021.

[George P]

A few tidbits about the new Halo game, take with a grain of salt though.   At this point, and since it's being built on a new game engine, the rumor is that they're going to break it up into 2 parts/releases, with the single player part hitting first in late 2019 and then the multiplayer part coming in 2020, probably after a long beta test.

 

If true it sure makes things interesting, and with the updated Xbox Live delivery system they've talked about, very possible, since the whole idea of that is to let you grab the parts of a game you care about, for example if you only want MP, just download the MP or vice versa.