With today's reveal of the tech behind Project Scorpio, we now know what is inside the next Xbox. But why did Microsoft build it in the first place?
Windows Central: "We caught up with incoming CEO Asha Sharma and newly promoted CCO Matt Booty to learn about what the future holds for Microsoft's gaming operation."
Technically, they've never brought it back. It's been downhill since Xbox One, which was its zenith. It hasn't 'gone back' since nor did it decline in such a fashion before.. We're dealing with a single peak company here, not multiple.
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What about after they dropped the kinect and added in BC, and then later the One X? That was definitely better than when it launched. That gen had many peaks and valleys for XB. This gen... not so much.
Those all happened at the same time. Kinect and BC was all at the introduction of Xbox One. They were still working upward from there, just not competing as well as they liked with PS4. But removing Kinect continued upward gain after that. It was truly the end of Xbox One and this generation where they've seen decline. It's been a very crash and burn situation.
Both Sony and Microsoft are just ruining their rep this generation. Microsoft with subscriptions over hardware, Sony with the focus on Live Service over what made them great.
Technically, they've lost every generation they've participated in. Only the Xbox 360 brought them close, but they still ended up in last place behind PS3 and Wii by the time it was all said and done.
If youre talking selling scnsoles, selling the most doesnt mean you win a generation.Thats just means you sold more consoles. Microsoft sold more xbox 360s than they did the original xbox. Sony sold less ps3s than they did ps2s and they sold them at a loss for almost the entire generation. They narrowly outsold the 360.Microsoft regressed with the xbox one and did even worse with the series x. But all that doesnt mean as much anymore because you dont need eother one to play the games. It a different industry now and its not so much about the hardware anymore.
That's what I was thinking. Even with the red ring of death, the Xbox 360 was relatively their top console.
Wii was a behemoth and PS3 flew off the shelves. 3rd sucks if it's a bad console generation, but that generation was pretty solid. I loved my phat PS3.
From 3rd place, it certainly looked like they were still headed in the right direction.
Then they fumbled.
The decline was simply not promising the AAA games. Not buying studios to deliver great games. The kinect, tv, price stuff could and was all walked back but it was the lack of games. No games exclusive mascot and identity first party games means no reason to buy said console.
Halo and Gears were reaching the later year's and getting stale. They needed new AAA something that they'd failed to do. Sure you can say they have games now. Right, that's like saying someone Went to war finally coming back after years of promises that you'll return only to finally return with a missing, hand, leg different person. Same with Xbox, MS forced them to go multiplat, not the same brand anymore cool you have games but at what cost?
IMO I dont think Asha and Matt are planning for this gen. No point what's done is done this gen but are planning for the next console, whatever that looks like. (again assuming she and Matt have actual say)
Chris, MS introduced BC for XBO in 2015, two years after it launched. There was a positive uptick for it. And while they reversed course on requiring kinect at launch, they fully removed it in 2017 which was the same year they introduced the One X. I remember that year saw an uptick as well.
When? Xbox to Xbox 360?
They’ve been pretty much on a windy slope since the Xbox One reveal but even then s*** started to hit the fan with TV, Sports and Kinect at the end of the 360 days.
I’d argue Xbox completely lost their major advantages over the competition halfway through the 360 era. They came out of the gates, swinging and winning, with 360 being a HUGE success, especially in the West. Then, Nintendo had a hit with Wii & motion-controls, and Microsoft looked at that and said; “Hey, we’d like a piece of that pie as well!”. That’s when they changed course and started shifting towards Kinect. Which obviously was a huge flop.
That decision/change in direction pretty much was the exact same moment when Sony course-corrected their many errors with the PS3, so suddenly Sony made a bunch of good decisions to take advantage of Xbox dropping the ball. Lower console-price, free online MP, and PS+ which was offering 6 (or more) ‘free games’ each month.
By the time that generation ended, PS3 had won back a huge amount of gamers, plus they had the momentum.
Then, obviously, XBO was announced, and I think we all know how that went. They never recovered, and they keep making just absolutely terrible decisions.
I agree, the 360 was only ahead during the first half of that generation. The PS3 had a rough start especially with their console price and various models. But halfway through with price reductions and games like infamous and the last of us they were pulling ahead.
Xbox during the 360 and beyond have been nothing but a plague on console gaming with the practice of buying their way into multiplatform and exclusives which made Sony eventually do the same thing. Now they're both just buying studios and then shutting them down. And I say this as a SEGA fanboy who went through sega bowing out of the console market due to Sony's success.
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Gamesbeat caught up with Blackley to extract some wisdom about Microsoft’s journey in games, what he thinks Sharma should do, and where gaming can go next. Part of his message is hopeful, but Blackley sees a lot of peril on the road that Microsoft is following. And it makes him worry about the future of gaming.
"I expect that the new CEO, Asha Sharma, her job is going to be as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night."
LOL
Anyway, let's wait and see maybe Mia Khalifa will surprise us.
I’m on the fence about her. I’ll give her chance, but if she is there to finish things off. Well what can you do.
After seeing the article of the possible sunsetting of Xbox as said by Seamus Blackley I believe, I went onto X because of a post I saw. It was a gif of Vegeta powering up, the poster commented as Vegeta yelling “Don’t take my fiercest competitor away from me.” Standing there in his blue Sayian/Freiza corps outfit. So it got me to thinking, so let me ask a question to N4G.
If Vegeta is PlayStation, who would Xbox and Nintendo be in the Dragon Ball universe?
Who would be Master Roshi?
I have my own opinion of course, I just want to see what others think.
The industry veteran has been tasked with leading the next phase of growth after overseeing the successful launch of Arc Raiders.
Interesting. Confirmed more expensive than Pro so I'll say 600 dollars
This is too similar to PS4 pro. I like it for the UHD Blu Ray and new dashboard, but it's going to be hard to justify. The 12gb is nice, but the dream of Zen and Rysen is over like a lot of people said. And for the real power to show you still need first party studio's or patches. And seeing how third party studio's are doing that on the PS Pro... Well, it's going to be interesting. Price is going to be a huge factor here. Sony won't have to do anything as long as the games keep coming, or just a price drop on the Slim and Pro.
So, here's my take, which is based on limited tech knowledge,
PS4 Pro:
GPU: PS4 Pro: 4.20 TFLOPs Polaris GPU
CPU: overclocked 2.1GHz Jaguar CPU
Scorpio:
an RX 480 would be: 5.8 TFLOPs, which, this is close to in scorpio. 40 customized compute units at 1172MHz.
CPU: 8 custom x86 cores clocked at 2.3GHz
I suppose, they're close in power. Obviously the edge goes to the Scorpio over PS4 PRo, but that's as it should be for hardware released after the PS4 Pro.
This is not quite the powerhouse I'd hoped for, but this is likely the best case scenario for the available hardware at release time.
Basically, I feel this is the same conversation We all had in regards to PS4 Pro when it released. Both are solid values, both are solid systems.
Well clearly as far as hardware goes it will be a strong console. MS needs to cultivate a more interesting diverse set of titles. Will it dominate in sales? I doubt it will dominate but sell far better than X1, I suspect it will. But likely at some point Sony will announce a new console being developed which will leap frog. And so the game will go. So what will the difference maker be? Games and where one's friends play.
He didn't see anything else running on the Scorpio except Forza? I wanna see if Witcher 3 can run in 4K 60fps
The most impressive thing and the thing that is going to make sure many a game can indeed perform rather well and reach 4k is the DirectX 12 implementation in silicon!
The CPU is just a beefed up Jaguar like in the Pro, the GPU is an AMD GPU with Polaris features and additional MS specific additions just like the GPU in the Pro is...
I do think MS has a slight edge here that they did more in software/libraries in an abstract way, especially with DirectX where Sony of course also has libraries devs can use but devs could also go real low level on the PS4 which can cause compatibility issues on different hardware...
Still, the Forza demo was rather nice, but the game was already running 1080p@60fps on stock X1, everyone already assumed they would be able to get games that do that already to become 4k@60fps (4 x 1.3Tf = 5.2Tf). What is impressive is that they apparently did it using only 4.2Tf (70% of 6Tf, the GPU wasn't utilised fully, fluctuated between 55% and 70%).
Let's see, to get a 900p game to 1080p they need 1.44 times the power. They managed to go from 1080p to 2160p using 3.25 times the power. To get a 900p game to 2160p it needs 1.44 x 3.25 times the power. Multiply that by 1.3Tf and the machine should be able to do 6.084Tf. Hmm, whaddayaknow, that IS possible.
Still the games that fluctuate with dynamic resolutions lower than 900p won't be able to.
Also, and this is very important to think about: games running at 30fps won't go to 60fps all that easily. So don't expect a 900p@30fps game to go to 2160p@60fps since that will be impossible. And yes, for double the framerate you do need a faster GPU, apparently some here believe that is not the case, but it really is...