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XBox (Games) Microsoft Hardware

Microsoft Says Upcoming Project Scorpio Might Be the Last Console Generation (engadget.com) 264

Posted by msmash from the last-console dept.
Earlier this year, Xbox chief Phil Spencer expressed desires to see a steady stream of hardware innovation rather than a typical seven-year gap between different console generations, noting smartphone market as inspiration. In an interview with Engadget, Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's Head of Xbox Games Marketing has hinted that the company's upcoming Project Scorpio is likely going to be the last generation of Xbox console you will ever need to purchase. From the report: I think it is ... For us, we think the future is without console generations, we think that the ability to build a library, a community, to be able to iterate with the hardware, we're making a pretty big bet on that with Project Scorpio. We're basically saying 'this isn't a new generation, everything you have continues forward and it works.' We think of this as a family of devices. But we'll see, we're going to learn from this, we're going to see how that goes. So far I'd say based on the reaction there appears to be a lot of demand and interest around Project Scorpio, and we think it's going to be a pretty big success. If the games and the content deliver, which I think they will do, I think it will change the way we think about the future of console gaming."
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Microsoft Says Upcoming Project Scorpio Might Be the Last Console Generation More

Microsoft Says Upcoming Project Scorpio Might Be the Last Console Generation

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  • No one needs more than Project Scorpio.

    • This is their answer to the Steam machines, I think.

      You can decide how much you want to "buy in" to the gaming experience.

      If you want 4K@120 Hz with 7.1 surround sound, there's a SKU for that. Meanwhile, if you're not interested in going that far, there is cheaper SKU that plays the same games with stereo audio at 1080p.

      I feel like this is a good direction for consoles overall since they can continue to push the envelope at the high end, provide a consistent development platform, and remain accessible to ga

    • No one needs more than Project Scorpio.

      He didn't say they wouldn't make a faster box. Just that they don't see themselves releasing "generations". Instead of there being a clean break every 6 years you're going to pick your price point and get all of the latest games at that quality.

      2016 : Xbox One: 1080p HDR gaming.
      2017 : Xbox One Scorpio: 4k HDR gaming and VR.
      Xbox 2019 : 4k HDR gaming and VR w/ raytracing.
      Xbox 2021: Lightfield Raytraced UHDR 4k gaming. Xbox Ones no longer play AAA titles. But will play indie games and DOTA 4.
      Xbox 2022: Ligh

      • On one hand, people are gonna bitch that their consoles still stop having new games made for them after 6 years. On the other hand, people can STFU and realize that they'll be able to still play the old games, which are what they really spent all their money on, on the new console. No more having to choose between adding yet another old console to the collection in order to keep playing the old games, just pop them into the new console (or transfer the downloads, more likely) and keep playing.

        As long as t

  • So it's a PC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:16PM (#52720619)

    to be able to iterate with the hardware

    The whole POINT of a console over a PC is a known quantity for software makers. You don't have to guess at CPU or GPU or RAM or what-have-you, you know the EXACT hardware specs of 100% of your target audience.

    Take that away and what exactly would differentiate Scorpio from a gaming PC? I remember on the N64 when they started making extra RAM for it and you had to check the boxes for whether it required that particular hardware expansion or not. They stopped doing that on future consoles because it was STUPID.

    What is it with Microsoft lately? Windows 10 being the 'last' Windows, everything after coming as patches and service packs, now their console division doing the same? Do they think we have somehow reached the end of the line of creating anything new ever that just won't work with old shit anymore?

    • Re:So it's a PC (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:23PM (#52720701)

      Take that away and what exactly would differentiate Scorpio from a gaming PC?

      My guess is: cost

    • Re:So it's a PC (Score:4, Informative)

      by gweilo8888 ( 921799 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:30PM (#52720749)
      Exactly. What Microsoft has just done is ensure I won't be buying the XBone Two (XBone Too?) either, because they've taken away the main thing which makes it preferable to gaming on my desktop PC: The fact that every game runs properly and never crashes, stutters or glitches because my hardware is different to that the devs tested on.

    • Re:So it's a PC (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:38PM (#52720837)

      I expect Microsoft is trying to end its consumer business and focus more on B2B.

      The Desktop PC isn't like the Desktop PC 10-20 years ago, where everyone needed a powerful desktop or laptop PC, to be considered part of the modern world. People are no longer willing to dump $2,000 for a new computer $600 - $700 now, and they want it thin and portable.
      Windows 10 uses mostly same specs that Vista recommended nearly a decade ago.
      14+ years ago you had about 4 years good run on your PC before you needed to upgrade, after that time modern software just wouldn't work on it. Expansion cards wouldn't be compatible (Or you filled all the slots already), You have peaked how much RAM it could.
      Today you can still use an early 64bit Intel (Core 2) computer and run most of the stuff without that much regression in speed for most normal tasks.

      Microsoft knows this, we have reached peak PC. There isn't much more growth in the PC Market. The Dells and Acers of the world can take solis in picking up the remaining market as the smaller guys slowly drop out. So the market isn't worth the hassle of consumer electronics.
      I also expect the XBox much like with Internet Explorer is a case where Microsoft won the war for market dominance without achieving a key objective. XBox owners are not necessarily big Windows Supporters or fans of all things Microsoft, much like how Apple was surrounded by the iPod halo effect. There wasn't an XBox halo (Other than the popular game) that made gamers who loved the XBox to be a big Microsoft fan. Buying Zunes, and going with PC's like Apple users did.

      • Desktop PC's haven't evolved much over the past decade, but graphics cards in gaming PC's have. Try playing modern DirectX 12 games with a graphics card that is just 5 years old, and you're going to have a lousy experience.

        The gaming consoles are going to have the same issue. Even the "mighty" Project Scorpio is going to need another upgrade when their competition is offering photo realistic 8K graphics on their systems.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          What they're saying is the games 5 years from now will still run just fine on the "scorpio" box, they'll just run without that photo realistic 8K graphics - no different that PC gaming these days. If you don't have a high-end vid card, you turn enough of the bling off to get the framerate you like. Heck, the new trend is to just make it automatic, and have the game tweak what it needs to to maintain framerate.

        • Well, try to run the latest PC game if your CPU is too slow.
          Nope, that 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo or that 3.0 GHz Athlon II X2 will run games like crap, even if / even though you maxed out the RAM and put a modern graphics card in. Worse, a $50 or $60 new CPU still runs games like crap, although that depends wildly on the particular game.

          So, you're looking at a $400 to $700 desktop upgrade which despite a vastly improved CPU will be mostly useful for the games only. Thus, although a decade ago a PC might have been

    • The hardware for each model is known in advance and likely custom-built to be backward compatible. Same for the firmware/OS.

      I imagine that developers can target Scorpio v1 or Scorpio v3.2 and the code will work with anything newer, similar to the Android SDK. If you want/need newer features, you will have to target the newer platforms that support them.

      I don't see this as being very difficult to accomplish. Google managed it with their SDK, and they have no control over the hardware. Microsoft will presumab

    • Re:So it's a PC (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @02:33PM (#52721223) Homepage Journal

      The whole POINT of a console over a PC is a known quantity for software makers. You don't have to guess at CPU or GPU or RAM or what-have-you

      Not always.

      Game Boy
      The Game Boy Pocket had a faster LCD, reducing the need to intentionally slow gameplay just to reduce motion blur. The Game Boy Color had a double speed processor, more RAM (48K instead of 16K), hardware-assisted copying of data to video memory, and a color LCD.
      Nintendo 64
      The stock console had 4 MB of RAM. The optional Expansion Pak increased this to 8 MB.
      PlayStation Portable
      Later models had a faster CPU (333 MHz vs. 222 MHz) and more RAM (64 MB vs. 32 MB). Some games were delivered only as a download to Memory Stick, not as a disc, and I'm guessing that was to speed up loading times.
      Nintendo DS
      The DSi had a faster CPU, more RAM, a camera, and a Wi-Fi chip capable of WPA.
      Nintendo 3DS
      Again with more CPU+RAM in the New Nintendo 3DS. It also includes a C-stick and an NFC reader for the cash grab known as "amiibo", but as I understand it, these are available as add-ons for the original 3DS.

      Of these systems, only the Game Boy Color had the majority of its library exclusive to the updated platform by the end of its life. Most later N64 games would still run on an unexpanded system, few DSi-only games were ever released, and I'm not aware of any PSP games that absolutely need a PSP-2000, PSP-3000, or PSP Go.

      Take that away and what exactly would differentiate Scorpio from a gaming PC?

      The same things that distinguish any console: exclusives, an uncluttered download store, better offline use including installation and multiplayer, less online cheating, and lower price (for equivalent CPU and RAM). Also a reasonably sized, uncluttered case, as even the original Xbox from 2001 was less XBOX HUEG than a PC tower.

    • Take that away and what exactly would differentiate Scorpio from a gaming PC?

      Nothing. The XBox is already basically a custom-built gaming PC running Windows. Microsoft has already been doing more to blur the lines between a Windows gaming PC. I believe "XBox Play Anywhere" games allow you to buy the game and play it either on the XBox or a Windows 10 PC. Meanwhile, the XBox One can run some Windows applications (IIRC).

      My guess is that, in a few years, there won't be a real distinction. In fact, Microsoft may take a page out of Steam's book and allow 3rd party "XBox" rigs runni

    • Re:So it's a PC (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @02:52PM (#52721329) Homepage

      The whole POINT of a console over a PC is a known quantity for software makers.

      I thought the point was to get gamers continually re-buy their game library and gaming accessories every few years by breaking all compatibility and discontinuing support for the old system.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I dont think thats quite fair. Xbox one has been continually adding (free) backwards compatibility support since they announced the program

    • Take that away and what exactly would differentiate Scorpio from a gaming PC?

      There is a big difference between 2 hardware platforms (One and Scorpio) supported at a time vs the 2,000,000,000 hardware combinations on Windows. You might even say it's a 1,000,000,000 times different.

      - Let's say we all stuck to the last 3 generations of GPU alone with a Low/Mid/High GPU selection per generation. Ok that's 6 GPUs from AMD and NVidia that's 18 GPUs total. But we also need the 2GB vs 4GB RAM in each of those...
      - Let's say there are "only" 7 CPUs from Intel: M, i3 low, i3 mid, i5 mid,

      • Things like known instruction sets and graphical APIs make your argument pointless. There is no need to run this so long as the lower limit for the engine is known. Everything is standardized.

        • That's not at all true. Look at the release of No Man's Sky this week. Some people had VC++ 2010 installed, some didn't. Some people were on the latest drivers, some weren't.

          Then you get into the unpredictable performance issues. We have a farm of 20 machines and about 5 different hardware configurations. The render time is pretty different across XGhz * YMemory * Zarchitecture. Some frames render really fast thanks to fast memory, some render really fast because high GHZ. It's a total crapshoot on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tsotha ( 720379 )

      It seems like every few years another layer of abstraction is added that makes things easier. I play games exclusively on the PC and haven't had a problem in ages. The only real advantage to consoles these days is cost, and that's only up-front cost since the games themselves are quite a bit more expensive.

    • Except that consoles have been more unfriendly to developers than PCs, so it works both ways. Consoles may be a one-size-fits-all, but you have to pay to get your game onto the console in the first place, seriously undercutting already low profit margins, and you have to jump when the console maker tells you to jump ("press X now!@!"). It can be very difficult to be an indie console game maker. And if you're not an ass making "exclusive" games, then you still have to build for multiple consoles plus the

  • Based on the XBox One... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:17PM (#52720631) Homepage Journal

    ...they can have my money for another console if and when they abandon this incredibly toxic and annoying "cloud"-based approach to gaming. I am NOT going to spend money on a console that inherits the unacceptable shortcomings of the XB One. Put the games on disk, sell the disc, let me stick the disc in the machine. it should work. It should NOT go into a paroxysm of download after download at the game and system and add-on level. I have literally watched a NEW game take HOURS to become usable on the XB One. Wrong direction, Microsoft (and Sony, and whoever.) I pay, I stick it in the console, and it works. Otherwise, no thanks. My time is worth more than your bleeding cloud-mania.

    • I agree with you entirely but the days of physical media are all but over and the days of even storing the APP and RESOURCES on your local box are on the way out in lieu of live streaming games.

      The cost savings and efficiencies to the business are just too good to pass up. In theory it should be good for your case because all updates will be on their server so you won't have long load times getting updates.

      OTOH you get to bear all the streaming costs!

  • So Microsoft wants to change consoles into PCs? (Score:3)

    by HannethCom ( 585323 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:18PM (#52720637)
    Completely different hardware, with different specs and capacity components, requiring developers to test the many different configurations.
    Where have we seen this before... Hrmm, I think they call them PCs.

  • I've suspected this for a while now (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Adeimantus9 ( 4656007 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:20PM (#52720659)
    I've suspected this for a while now. I think in the future we'll see Xbox and Playstation branded PCs with Live and PSN as Steam alternatives.

    • Re:I've suspected this for a while now (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:42PM (#52720867)

      I read an article several weeks ago (sorry, no longer have source) from a Valve employee who was saying that Microsoft is trying to slowly break Steam and introduce technology that makes Steam unviable. The motivation being to move people to their marketplace instead of people using steam.

      Truth? Maybe. Paranoia? Yeah, could be that too. I think Microsoft's vision is to blur the difference between Xbox and Windows over time and try and set up a similar walled garden to what Apple has- sharing apps between Windows and Xbox. The last thing Microsoft wants though is for Steam games to work on Xbox.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        http://www.pcgamer.com/tim-sweeney-thinks-microsoft-will-make-steam-progressively-worse-with-windows-10-patches/

        Not a steam employee, but a well-known figure in the industry.

  • Your console is the new PC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phresno ( 677793 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:21PM (#52720683)

    The reason I dare say most people buy a console for games is they know any game they buy for that console will just-simply-work (unless it's from EA). If you don't mind the upgrade / incompatibility issues, you're probably already bought a PC and play your games there. Why do we need to turn console gaming into yet another version of PC gaming exactly? (other than the obvious - because we want more money)

    If nothing else, they're already late to the game in the arena of merging PC and console gaming: Steam BigPicture anyone?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      The reason I dare say most people buy a console for games is they know any game they buy for that console will just-simply-work (unless it's from EA).

      This isn't the 90s. Most PC games "just-simply-work" (unless it's from EA) today, and have for years, as long as you keep your box patched (reasonably current vid card driver). The only exception I've had in 10 years was the new Doom, that for some reason needed a page file to run, and that astonished me because I hadn't had to dick with PC settings to run a game in so many years!

      Sure, you can fiddle around with video options on games if you enjoy tweaking things, but the game at least works out of the bo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by phresno ( 677793 )

        Platforms like Steam, GoG, Desura, etc have certainly done a lot to absolve much of these issues where they can, though I've run into more than a few games that don't work with a simple click-install-run as you'd expect even ignoring backwards compatibility for older games; hence the expected jab at EA. They're not the only ones though, and games still do not age well in terms of compatibility across OS and hardware revisions (e.g. Fallout 3 and Win7). This is exactly the issue Scorpio is claiming to solve,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Yeh, Win7 seems to be the breaking change for many old games - stuff written in the XP era occasionally has issues, and I always check the forums first (if I buy em on GOG I never see issues). But Windows 7 is 7 years old now, and really it's the pre-Vista stuff that's troublesome.

          I've never seen "Visual C++ runtime and .Net framework hell", but then I haven't bought a game in an actual box since Steam existed.

          In any case, making new XBox games work as well on the "XBox family" seems no harder than the goo

      • Uh...I think you're oversimplifying the situation.

        Fact #1: A LOT of multi-platform games have abysmal PC launches. Stability, if not overall performance, is obviously superior on consoles. From the recent release of No Man's Sky, to Dark Souls III, to last year's launch of Fallout 4, PC launches are often plagued with crashes, glitches, and nearly unplayable states, compared to their console versions. That's what "just-simply-work" means. You go to the store, put in your disk, and the game will load and pla

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          You go to the store, put in your disk,

          People still do that in the 21st century?

          I never count on a game's launch being a window to actually get to play said games, reliably.

          Fair point. I don't buy games at launch, because why buy $60 games? I do see this complaint frequently in reviews of console ports, but that was sort of the "not made by EA" jab. NMS just has no excuse.

          You're also not factoring in cheats and hacks, which are HUGE factors for multiplayer PC gaming, that almost never effect consoles. Several high-profile AAA titles are sometimes nearly unplayable only because the mp component is on the PC, such as GTA V.

          I was going to object "that's why on PCs you can run your own server", but I guess that ability is vanishing. Still, there are planty of multi-player PC games that aren't overrun by cheaters - if the vendor insists on running the servers, then they're signing up to

    • The whole reason I went with consoles was to avoid compatibility issues and have the guarantee that if I pop in a disc it will work.

  • ...so we're back to the 'impending death of the gaming console' again?

    Seems like we just heard about the "death of the gaming computer" but I guess the cycles move more quickly.

    How's that "death of the laptop" coming along by the way? I seem to recall the "experts" prognosticating we'd all be working on touchscreen tablets by now? Then of course there's paper - totally dead-tech too, amirite?

    Well, I have to run and answer some of my 140+ work emails. It's a lot for something else I've been told is totall

    • Then of course there's paper - totally dead-tech too, amirite?

      Being a kid way back in the 1970s... I still remember much wailing and gnashing of teeth from companies like Georgia Pacific and Weyerhaeuser, who were very concerned about how the advent of computers was going to completely kill the market for paper within a decade. :-D

    • Then of course there's paper - totally dead-tech too, amirite?

      You are almost right:It is dead-tree tech

  • What? No! (Score:3)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:31PM (#52720761)

    Earlier this year, Xbox chief Phil Spencer expressed desires to see a steady stream of hardware innovation rather than a typical seven-year gap between different console generations, noting smartphone market as inspiration

    Isn't that an ecosystem consumers actually don't like [slashdot.org]?

    • Does it matter what consumers "like"?

      Consumers may not like the steady stream of new hardware- but it doesn't stop them throwing their money at it. If it's more profitable to keep upgrading hardware one baby-step at a time, they will do that and laugh all the way to the bank.

      • Consumers may not like the steady stream of new hardware- but it doesn't stop them throwing their money at it.

        Given sales trends, at least at the high end - it appears that is no longer the case. We're reaching a point where consumers no longer see a compelling argument to purchase the next generation phone every year or two - their current phone is fast enough and already does everything they want it to do.

        • I wonder how much that slowdown has to do with the fact that Cell Phone service providers have moved away from the "free (or discounted) every two years" model.

          • I suppose that's also a possibility. But if that was the case, I wouldn't be able to project my predilection towards holding onto phones for several years onto the population at large!

    • I think there is a middle ground. The last gen went on for WAY too long.

  • Sounds pointless to me .... (Score:3)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @01:35PM (#52720799) Journal

    I mean, the big reason consoles are still popular is their nature as essentially "set top boxes" to attach to your television(s) at home.

    There's really no reason you couldn't make every single game title ever played on a console run just as well on a properly configured computer. But even if *everything* was ported over, it wouldn't change the situation.

    People like consoles for the ease of use and their nature as single-purpose devices. (Well, multi-purpose if you count gaming as one task, and playback of media as another.) They're designed to just plug in the wall for power, attach a single cable to the TV for audio/video, and go.

    Once you start blurring the lines, selling "upgradable consoles" or "PC/console combo" devices? I think you're losing sight of what they're all about to begin with.

  • Steam (Score:2)

    by skogs ( 628589 )

    So, Steam? SteamOS must have the right idea, a platform that delivers content regardless of the physical platform.

    • You mean the SteamOS and SteamMachines that have basically been left to wither on the vine? In the end, the SteamMachine was a platform that was trying to woo PC gamers to a console format, which is a very hard sell. I'd bet MS was watching very closely to all the points where SteamMachine failed. Personally, I'd love a console that I can throw a new "video module" into every few years. I have a Core2 Duo, w/ 16GB RAM and a GTX970 in it that will play every game I throw at it. Can I crank it all to the

  • Project Scorpio is likely going to be the last generation of Xbox console you will ever need to purchase.

    Wow, wish I would have known that before I bought an XBone.

  • 640k (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ukab the Great ( 87152 )

    Does the Microsoft console platform I'll never have to buy another of contain all of the 640k RAM that I'll ever need?

  • Directx was a good thing for Microsoft, but when they started making game consoles, Windows suffered.

    It's been bad for PC gamers too. Many PC games looked no better than their Xbox counterparts because everyone dumbed down the games to run on the Xbox.

    I don't think that MS has the will to do two platforms.

    • I just wish i understood why Xbox had to press down the PC gaming division for so long. Its like they went out of their way to be dicks. IT finally took them losing badly to Sony to finally realize PC is important to gaming.

  • This sounds like the same "strategy" that MS is using for win10, the question remains, how are they going to monetize you, oops, sorry, I mean it.

  • And then someone invents true-color pixels, and we need to upgrade again (please)

  • The phones model (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @02:37PM (#52721249) Journal

    I think I see what MS is trying to do here. My guess is that they want something that looks more like the mobile phone model for consoles. Which is to say, rather than the "hard" generational breaks you get with the traditional console cycle, where every 5-8 years a new console comes along and renders the old one obsolete, they instead want new hardware every 2 years or so (at a guess), which emphasises evolution rather than revolution.

    What I also suspect is that they're planning a kind of limited back/forward compatibility system for games. They've repeatedly said that Scorpio will not get exclusives. A lot of people are suspicious of this, but I actually believe what they've said. That said, I still think they're being disingenuous. Their next step will likely be another console iteration maybe 2 years after Scorpio (2019), let's call it Sagittarius, whose titles will be playable on Scorpio hardware, albeit with lower performance, but not on the current XB1. The eventual successor to Sagittarius (2021) will share compatibility with that console, but not with Scorpio - and so on. So Scorpio will technically never have exclusives.

    That said, this is still a risky proposition. By and large, console gamers like the fairly long console cycle. They're usually on a tighter budget than PC gamers and being able to get away with very infrequent hardware changes is a plus.

    Moreover, what this plan (if it is indeed their plan) would do is eliminate the mid/late part of the traditional console cycle. That's not necessarily a good thing. For gamers, the early part of the cycle is usually a pretty dire time. Early adopters tend to get a mixture of thin technological showcases and sloppy, hurried ports of games originally developed for the previous generation. There are very, very few classic console games that were early-cycle releases, from the mid-90s onwards. In the mid/late cycle, developers are comfortable with the hardware and the focus shifts more onto the actual games.

    The mid/late cycle is also traditionally a good time for the console manufacturer. Launch windows are awful. They're risky and they need a lot of upfront investment (in hardware development, games development, support for third parties and marketing) that can be hard to recoup quickly. By contrast, in the mid/late cycle, the real cash cow, which is to say the third-party licensing fees (which are, I cannot emphasise enough, where the real money is in the industry) are flowing in nicely. Admittedly, in the 360/PS3 generation, the late-cycle was allowed to go on too long and gamers lost interest, but that was more down to tactics than industry structure.

    So in some respects, this looks a bit of a self-destructive strategy. However, I think the industry has painted itself into a corner in this generation. For the first time I can remember, the real battleground between the main rivals was not their exclusive games franchises, but on multiplatform performance. With modern development costs, platform manufacturers can no longer afford to fund the same number or quality of outright exclusives. Instead, the PR battle was fought on technical specs; Sony annihilated MS when the PS4 and XB1 launched because the PS4 had some nominal performance advantages that were hard to even perceive for most gamers, but which made great marketing.

    So the industry has locked itself into a battle of technical one-upsmanship. Worse, it's done so at a time when PC gaming is seriously resurgent. Trying to get into a tech-specs battle with the PC gaming scene is an unwinnable fight. So now, if Sony and MS don't want to lose a fight on the ground they themselves have chosen, they need to keep iterating the hardware to remain competitive.

    • Re:The phones model (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <slebrun@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @03:11PM (#52721467) Journal

      Who cares if the XB1 can play Sagittarius games? The import thing will be that the Sagittarius can play XB1 games, and Scorpio games. And that the Taurus can play XB1 games, and Scorpio, and Sagittarius. And so on.

      Look at how excited everybody got when Red Dead Redemption was finally announced for XB1 backwards compat.

      People expect that their old rig can't play Witcher 3, but people also expect that their brand new, top-of-the-line rig can play the old games, perhaps with dosbox or some other emulation. But gog.com is absolutely a thing that proves that concept.

  • Called Project Aria...for the gaming world that is....

  • Scorpio? (Score:3)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @03:29PM (#52721551) Homepage Journal

    Has anyone asked Hank Scorpio [wikia.com] what his opinion of this is?

  • We're using the mobile market as inspiration here? Because nobody's every had compatibility issues in the mobile realm! Hell even on Apple, there's continual confusion about what apps will run on what model of the iPhone using what version of iOS.

    So we now have:
    - Developers get stuck with the PC problem of always having an untestable and ever-moving set of hardware specs rather than a fixed, guaranteed target platform.

    - Users are now going to be saddled with a guess-and-hope scenario when purchasing a new

  • All new Hw/sw can be upward compatible if the organization puts in the effort....but are we really better off ? Compare and contrast the mainframe and PC marketplace evolution .....

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