DF Direct: Xbox Series X to run on Xbox One is good or bad?

Digital Foundry just posted their video discussing the matter into much greater detail and where they stand on the subject Xbox Series X to support current Xbox One which needed it's own thread:

• Most games for a console generation don't tend to start pushing boundaries for a while to come and early adopters have grown accustomed to just getting better versions of last gen games.

• Remember, this only applies to 1st-party exclusives. Games from Ubisoft, EA etc are under no forced mandate to make their games for the Xbox One or X.

I still say it's a smart move by MS business perspective, it makes sense for them business wise, it ensures no next gen multiplayer games will be lacking players, and it doesn't immediately devalue their old-gen console.

Taken from John Linneman Twitter page:

Personally, I don't think it's as much of an issue as he's making it seem to be, but I can see where he's coming from. Games like Titanfall had to cut back on what content they could work on because they had to keep in mind about the last-gen version, which that even had to get delayed by over a month.

@davillain-: I await the meltdown from Benji lol.

Still watching the video but I have heard this comment "What if developers want bigger worlds the storage would be a problem catering lower platform". Yet, games are so big right now that its overwhelming so, I am not sure how much bigger do people want games to be? We have games like No Man Sky which is absolutely ridiculous in size.

As someone who develop games, their perspective does not reflect what actually transpires in development. Its kind of reminds me of things I expect from ignorant people.

@davillain-: It’s a smart move for software sales because of the attach rate. It’s also a terrible move for hardware sales because it devalues the Series X and Xbox One X. Those two machines are being handcuffed by a 1.7Ghz CPU, 1.31 Tflops GPU, DDR3 RAM and a mechanical harddrive. What’s the point of having strong consoles when the games have to be designed to run on a calculator watch?

I don't want to play games that are on the original xbox one I can't be alone

That argument should be used every time someone considers upgrading their CPU, GPU or hard-drive for PC. I have never heard anyone voice that complaint until now.

Sounds like a good strategy to me, at least for the first couple of years. By year three or so though, people will be wanting most if not all games made just for the series x.

I say that from the perspective of a Xbox One X owner and from the company, who want that base included, and even the S crowd to a lesser extent. Games take half a decade to make these days, and the games we'll be playing for the next several years will basically have been designed from the start from Xbox One schemes.

This'll help Microsoft sell more One X's and I doubt it'll have much of a negative effect on Series X sales. That next gen console will mostly entice high end, early adopters regardless of what MS does early on.

For me personally it's great news, as I'm just about to purchase a One X system, and I plan on using it with my 4k set for several years before I get a next gen console. Seems smart for Microsoft to not leave people behind with their games, while still encouraging them to upgrade eventually.

@Pedro: Do you want better physics in games? Better NPC AI? The 1.7 Jag cant do that.

You’ve never heard PC gamers talk about consoles holding PC back? PC gives you the best performance possible, but make no mistake, PC games would be better if they weren’t tied to the consoles. Look at Crysis 1 vs Crysis 2 and 3.

At least on PC, we get to decide what we turn up and down, and what we prioritize as far as resolution vs framerate. Enjoy playing games that dip in the 20fps range for another 6 years. And I hope you like walking down corridors and those walk and talk sequences so we can wait for the X and S to load.

Microsoft knows Xbox gamers love Xbox One so much that they're going to let them play it for another two years in the new gen. So awesome.

Good for Xbox One owners and a goodwill gesture from Xbox to raise confidence. It also makes me more confident about getting PS5 soonest I can.

This is as much an issue as someone not buying a 2080ti because games also run on a 750ti. Gamers will still want ray tracing, higher frame rates and higher quality visuals. Knack was a pos regardless of using the power of the PS4, The order was a blurry mess with mediocre gameplay, Driveclub was straight up abandoned by Sony. Infamous was flashy but lower rated than on PS3. Dead Rising was also a worst game on XOne than on the 360. Ryse was a mediocre game. And so on. If anything having a higher user base will allow them to release a proper good game instead of some flashy, gimmicky mediocre game as there will be an increased return on the investment.

If I was MS I would be more careful about how long they're going to support the One, I wouldn't compromise for more than an year of full support. They said two and I have my doubts if they'll keep their word. The second year should be a gradual phase out.

Only drama queens will try to spin this as a disaster and try to compare it with the XOne launch. It's a shift in paradigm, that will have some positives and negatives. And in practicality is beneficial for both the consumer and MS. I can agree that lessens the emotional impact of a new gen but **** that.

And we don't even know exactly how development is planned. A more modular approach might allow a better results than expected. It's also not exactly like PC, the target hardware is very specific and developers like 343 have a deep understanding of the XOne.

Anyone who owns a PC knows how satisfying is making an upgrade. And unless it's a super old PC, it's not because you are now able to play games you couldn't before, but because every game will look and run better. Maybe even getting access to new tech like ray tracing.

We have already been getting the better versions of games this gen with PC. So, XSX is just going to be offering a taste of those benefits from first party for the first 2 years. This is disappointing as I want to see games that push the limit and are not possible on this gen. The quicker PS5 and XSX become the baseline and this gen is abandoned, the better.

Good for MS and those not wanting to upgrade. Bad for those that do upgrade. Bad for xbox fanboys because the console won't sell nearly as much as if it had true exclusives. Only good news here is that 3rd party dev's aren't forced to make their games for the old hardware. MS exclusives like sea of thieves, crackdown, ori, & cuphead are all made to be able to run on weak hardware... more of those types of games incoming for a few years.

Moving from an i5 6600K to a Ryzen 7: 2700X was a huge big deal, I needed more cores/threads and I won't need to upgrade my CPU for the next 3 more years. To tell the truth, I could've still use m,y 6600K but all that upgrade was because it was work related. I needed to turn my gaming PC into a workstation/gaming combo. The better upgrading your PC the better you want to run your games in higher resolution.

The complaints comes from not pushing the console's hardware and not using those new features is a valid concern but for the average console gamer, I doubt this will be an issue.

To the ones wanting nothing but the best possible hardware and devs pushing the limits of existing hardware to the max: I feel you, but that's not happening now or in the future. Consoles--weak consoles at that, have been around for decades and will continue to be, and a majority of players will be using them and buying games for them, so it isn't happening.

Just not business worthy to make the highest end products only, for the least amount of people. Just freeze your body in Han Solo carbonite and set it to thaw in about 50 years from now. Maybe then you'll be content with the level of tech available.

No Man's Sky isn't exactly large. Everything is just procedurally generated to give the impression that it's large. It's not even about actual size either. When gamers talk about bigger worlds, they mean worlds with more in them, not just a long distance between point A and B. And gamers want to move through these worlds seamlessly without loading screens if they wanted to. Storage speeds and memory bandwidth are absolutely crucial to those kinds of games.

I also remember last gen when people we complaining about PS3/360 title being corridor games because devs could only fit stream so much from the drive before things started to pop in.

This is also a clear sign that even Microsoft isn't totally convinced in the viability of new console hardware at the better part of a decade in to this gen.

Are console consumers really going to jump right in to a new gen in mass this year? Probably not.

PC gamers usually have much greater control of their settings than console gamers. A PC gamer can turn down settings that are not important to them and keep the ones that are. With that, they can go longer without the need to upgrade. As you know, console gamers don't usually have that ability.

So DF MS ass kissing site agree with lemmings yay..

Now what the fu** does that have to do with not having console specific games like all consoles had done since the market started?

@tormentos: Yes, everything must remain forever the same!

Better physics in games translates to what exactly? I have been hearing that mantra for almost 2 decades. The reason PhysX died is because gameplay revolving around physics is gimmicky. Physics is now just scalable cosmetic compute effects. The same for AI. Every gen big talks from gamers about better AI. Key part is that its from gamers, not developers. Instead we have people complaining more and more about the AI as far back as F.E.A.R being better despite all the advancements. So, lets move away from the wishful thinking and ground ourselves in reality. Developers don't give a shit about gamers' pipe dreams.

I have heard PC gamers talk about consoles holding back PC but that's a fallacy that people repeat without actually exploring reality. There are more PC exclusives than all the games ever made for all of consoles in the entire history of consoles yet consoles are the ones holding back PC? The reality frowns at such a silly notion. The top ten played games on Steam right now is

1. Counter Strike
2. Dota 2
3. PUBG
4. Monster Hunter World
5. Tom Clancy Rainbow Six
6. GTAV
7. Destiny 2
8. Team Fortress
9. Rocket League
10. Rust

Only three are PC exclusives and they can run on a potato as people so frequently state. But, consoles are holding back PC gaming.

Crysis 1 ran like shit. PC gamers complained about how poorly optimized the game were. It wasn't until years later that it fanboyishly became part of PC fanboys mantra against consoles. I bet you can find so many threads and discussion of how impossible it is for the game to even run on the consoles, yet the game was ported to consoles despite the developer sayings its IMPOSSIBLE. Its funny how that works.

"Enjoy playing games that dip in the 20fps for another 6 years" Seems like you switch tracks mid comment. Games with walk and talk sequences are still going to be their because for "story and cinematic" gameplay. MS is supporting current gen for up to 2 additional years and here you are making the claim that its 6 years. What are you even talking about?

And developers adjust the settings to run at what they consider the best on consoles. Not sure what your point is though.

@Zero_epyon said:

No Man's Sky isn't exactly large. Everything is just procedurally generated to give the impression that it's large. It's not even about actual size either. When gamers talk about bigger worlds, they mean worlds with more in them, not just a long distance between point A and B. And gamers want to move through these worlds seamlessly without loading screens if they wanted to. Storage speeds and memory bandwidth are absolutely crucial to those kinds of games.

I also remember last gen when people we complaining about PS3/360 title being corridor games because devs could only fit stream so much from the drive before things started to pop in.

No Man's Sky is exactly large. Don't change the definition of large. Whether its procedural or not its has a stupendously large world.

Last I check game worlds are already stupid large. So large that developers don't even know what to do with the world. I played Assassin Creed Origin and the world was just freaking vast with so much busy work. That's all you are going to get from large worlds. Busy work. Now when I read X times the size of game B. I just know its going to be filler. So, game world sizes being small is definitely not a problem despite how often its thrown into conversations like this.

I definitely can related on the productivity side but even then I look at the benchmarks over the past few years and the performance increase in applications are so mediocre. Even though I delayed my upgrade, I am not even getting double the performance over my previous setup.

It seems to me people are still caught up in the nostalgia of ground breaking advances more specifically visually. But that ship has sailed. Taking full of advantage of hardware architecture (x86)that has been around for almost 41 years is not an explorative venture that consoles used to be due to unconventional hardware. Most of the performance advances now is really multi-threaded code.

@Pedro: For No Man's Sky case. "Wide as an ocean but depth of a puddle" meaning it relies on it's regenerating world but not saying it's the worst thing to happen. The game is big, but everything you see and play is all using regenerating world process. That's what Zero_epyon is trying to tell you.

Between games like Titanfall, Watch Dogs & Shadow of Morder being on PS3/Xbox 360 to their PS4/Xbox One counterparts, that's a huge difference and when Dying Light started to appear for current-gen consoles, we saw alot in that game and their was no way Dying Light could be played on PS3/Xbox 360.

I know what he is trying to tell me. However, you cannot say its not a big world regardless of the quality or method in which the game generates the world.

I am sorry Davillain, the "no way" game X can run on console Y is a dead notion. I am not saying that the game running on shitty hardware is going to be a good experience but it definitely isn't going to take away from the high end experience. In fact, one can argue people will be more compelled and appreciative of the hardware advances of the newer systems after playing the shit version. :)

Exactly. What they consider best isn't always what gamers want. Some gamers don't care about motion blur, bloom and screen space reflections, but if the dev put it in a console game, and it's making the framerate tank, well sucks to be you. A PC gamer with the same game and a similarly spec'd pc could just turn those off or reduce the quality of them and not have to upgrade their pc just for the sake of having them.

I'm not changing the definition of large for no man's sky. You literally load in a solar system that gets procedurally generated. The game world is the size of whatever that solar system is. You don't free roam through the universe. The size of NMS on disk is only about 11 GB. Compare that tho Red Dead Redemption 2 which is over 100 GB. That's a large game because there are real places to go and real stories in side quests along with the maps being so large.

Great, another gen to be held back by the Xbox Ones potato CPU...

Your first paragraph doesn't relate to anything in this discussion. Consoles don't typically facilitate customization and this discussion is more specifically about cross gen / scalability of games over console generations.

As for your second paragraph I also not sure what significance the game's files sizes to what we are talking about. So, you will have to clarify the points you are making.

@goldenelementxl: By that logic, I wont go near a PC. Every single game is developed to run on all kinds of gpus, cpus etc....what's the point of buying a high end PC, when all games run on lower specced ones too?

And 20fps? Really? Not even you believe that....

@Zero_epyon: The reason PC has so many graphical options is that there are infinate combinations of components which give infinate degrees of performance.

Dont need it on console, though many games give you the choice between performance or resolution.

I don't think it's such a big deal if it does support xb1x games. I think the only thing that annoys me is that there won't be any exclusives at launch that will push the new xbox graphics.

Not necessarily. Most games don't support every kind of hardware. There's always a minimum target. You're not going to find many games being able to run on an ATI Radeon 9000 this day in age. No the most likely reason is because PC devs know that PC gamers are also hardware enthusiasts and they give these options to them so that they can control their experience. It's also because of the nature of PC games, if the dev won't do it, the consumers will. It becomes a selling point if the game lets you fine tune those settings without digging through game files.

These have been the majority of my concerns as well.

I hope someone out there another dev think differently perhaps just as crazy as what fans think. Maybe even crazier than what we think. Like you said we have seen these big worlds we also have seen there limitations. They don't need to get bigger. Someone out there should think to do more with them first. There still a lot to do with what we got that I hope its not just my stupid pipe dream. What I get from you and I hope its not the case is nothing can be done technologically that effect gameplay anymore. Its just graphics perhaps if you want to do more go with a different style that does not require more resources.

Personally its not a big deal about what MS is doing. Its great for consumers and probably no one is thinking about designing my pipe dream as you called it in another post. At least not within the time frame MS has given so its not like they will be missing anything. Ironically I think they are saying after two years they maybe making Series X and above games only.

Ah I see you're being disingenuous, and went the cartoony looking games route, I mean its not like games can look like Gears, Halo, Forza not to mention a host of other games because they're not on XB1....oh wait.

What a stupid comment, but seeing as you're a cow its to be expected.

I agree with what you are saying, but I feel it will be an issue once those that were lead to believe the XSX is the strongest console but the PS5 is outperforming it becomes an issue. I don't expect that to take 2 years... not even for the most casual of all gamers. I seriously doubt MS sticks to their guns for an entire two years. I feel as though they will feel forced to pony up the dough to buy a couple/few games to be exclusives within a full year if things aren't going as swimmingly as they had envisioned.

@daredevils2k: Theres no reason to think that a game like Godfall will look or perform bad on a ps5 just because it will also play on a lower specced PC.

Equally, Halo Infinate or Shenua 2 will be much better than their x1 counterparts.

@daredevils2k: I'm pretty sure ray tracing will be the main focus of early gen games and there's absolutely no reason to think that XSX games won't have it, just like happens with PC.

It's bad if PS5 can show games with way more capabilities that XSX can't match because it's held back by the Xbox One. If this isn't the case, then it really doesn't matter that much. Looking forward to the launch games in a couple of months.

Switch is gonna have company in the sub-hd club.

So

We saw amazing looking Hellblade 2, nice looking Halo Infinite running on series X that proves that two separate pipelines are being used to scale a game across Xones, XoneX, XseX.

In the video, DF proves exactly that by showing examples how Tomb Raider and Titanfall were being made by two separate teams as two separate games for Past-Gen and Current-Gen.

They are making kinda two games at the same time. Not with key gameplay element differences, rather kinda remake-level upgrades for Series X.

Makes sense. not that bad. Weeeell it's bad that we are not seeing what Series X can do from the start, but not terrible either.

The Initiative is early at work for their first hugh mungus project. I guess that will be Microsoft's first Series X exclusive

IGN Xbox podcast nail it,they had a dev’s response on up/down scaling ,if they develop the game using the new Xbox power and scale down Then no problem it’s when you scale up from the weakest you don’t get the full top end power benefit,according to that expert(not a SW fanboys opinion).Ign even going as far as saying the exclusivity may be in-game feature difference ie XBSX gets ABCD features,XB1X gets ABC features and XBS gets AB features, but this was just their opinion.

At the end of the day MS confirmed nex gen exclusivity a year or at most 2 into the generation.

It’s also funny how the ones making the most noises on this news are cows and hermits who wouldn’t buy the new Xbox anyway HAH

The “foaming at the gash” has been funny to read,it will be even funnier when ps announce the likes of HZD2 and GOW5 are cross gen because why would you turn your back on 50/70% of your income base,a base who have the added expense of a decent 4k HDR10-10+ Dolby vision 120hz tv,because if you ain’t got the right tv you ain’t getting the full experience anyway HAH

DF brought nice example to the table for that - Horizon Zero Dawn. Devs wanted to add Flight mechanics but PS4 was too weak to handle that. If Horizon has been released as PS4/PS5 crossplatform title, they still couldn't have implemented flying mechanics because its impossible to scale it down from PS5 to PS4. PS4 just isnt capable of it. At any scale.

All these stuff is good coz every console will receive own version, not like remaster-level, no. More like remake level.

But its sad at the same time coz gameplay elements and dev's creative view of new opportunities are being still limited.

And it's going to be a very long time until we see console developers finally moving away from PS4/Xbox One and take advantage of what we have now on PS5/Xbox Series X. As much as I love Horizon: Zero Dawn, I personally don't want to see it being cross-gen, Guerrilla Games themselves need to not limit their resource on an outdated hardware and start developing from the ground up PS5. I think Sony is aware of this and don't wanna follow suit with MS.

:P

@utherellus: I don't believe that for a second. Sophisticated physics surrounding flight, maybe, but there are literally flight sims on the PS4. There are flight sims on MS DOS 286 computers. They could absolutely have figured out a flight system for the PS4.

I thought it was important for MS to put a line across this gen and move on. Sony will be on the front foot yet again with PS5 having exclusives only available on that platform.

What are 3rd party developers doing?

Will they develop games for new gen cross platform only?

@xantufrog: AC Origins had a flight system and that game looks great.