Poll: *** Xbox Series X|S - General Discussion Thread ***

Which will you buy?

  • Series X

    Votes: 530 59.8%
  • Series S

    Votes: 104 11.7%
  • Not interested

    Votes: 230 26.0%
  • Both

    Votes: 22 2.5%

  • Total voters
    886
Soldato
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This was pure damage control after being taken by surprise at the scale of the leaks.

They can’t afford for people to think there wont be another xbox as they still have millions of series consoles to try and shift.
 
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People are going to take what they want out of that 20 min pod/announcement at the end of the day.

For now, yes it’s as you were. Cue everyone saying "ah everyone got worked up for nothing". And sure there is a select few people that went OTT which happens in every fandom.

But the fact that Spencer couldn’t confirm that the bigger titles wouldn’t be going to other platforms further down the line just says to me it's a matter of when they show up on there and not if.

So they’ve put a plaster on the situation which is what they needed to do but I think it’s pretty clear the wheels are now in motion.
 
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People are going to take what they want out of that 20 min pod/announcement at the end of the day.

100% this.

It feels very clear it's a business pivot, but then comes down to how much faith or trust you put into the messaging. Something Microsoft has clearly struggled with in the past.

If the hardware side does become unsustainable then it won't be an immediate exit from the hardware business. That was never on the cards.
 
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Feels like for a good while now the line has been "games as a service" is the priority not selling consoles (there was a bit a while ago about how they lost this console war with the loss of the last gen when people built their digital collections, they have a point there)
So for me it was not that much of a surprise for stuff to start appearing elsewhere. It's just the cloak and daggers stuff that's frustrating.

Feels inevitable either we see gamepass on other devices or more likely Starfield etc on other platforms after a timed exclusive, I expect it will be how Sony is with PlayStation stuff on PC.
 
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So how would people feel about this next next-gen/leap piece of hardware being say £8/900 but as close to a gaming PC as they can get in terms of spec? Offer a true premium experience and then the cheaper options being the S/X dependant on your budget…
 
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So how would people feel about this next next-gen/leap piece of hardware being say £8/900 but as close to a gaming PC as they can get in terms of spec? Offer a true premium experience and then the cheaper options being the S/X dependant on your budget…

This is what they should do, for those who want the premium experience, but it won't shift that many consoles if the Series X and S together can't even compete with the PS5 as is... the games need to be coming and looking substantially better on that premium console (120hz 4K max settings) scenario.
 
Soldato
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I could see that being the direction that the go for, if people are willing to shell £1k + for a phone £500+ for a smart watch then they would still sell.
 
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The problem with Xbox is lack of quality 1st party games and quality ports.

Microsoft have so many studios and most they don't know what to do with.

Everytime they do release something it's usually botched one way or another or over hyped and ends up in disappointment, latest Forza Motorsport another example.

It's mostly mismanagement and very typical of large conglomerates taking over small companies, they suck the life out of them and stops them from being creative.

COVID didn't help obviously but also the last gen consoles ended up being supported much longer than planned which also played havoc.

However they should be catching up by now and the release schedule should be bursting at the seams, but that's not the case, so did Microsoft and to an extent Sony not have a plan entering this generation?

I like Xbox and playstation neither takes a preference for me other than I've got a series x, but this was purely because I already had Xbox and sticking with the eco system made sense and my boy was familiar with it. But one can't help be disappointed spending a lot of money and it feeling obsolete before it's really got going.

I'm hoping Microsoft are learning from this shambolic era but being a huge corporation I doubt it.
 
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Soldato
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I found Sarah's statement that she wants next gen to be the largest leap yet interesting

Here is some previous leaps

Xbox OG to Xbox 360: 10x increase in raw throughput

Xbox 360 to Xbox One: 5x increase in raw throughput

Xbox One to One X: 4x increase in raw throughput

One X to Series X: 2x increase in raw throughput



You can see the trend here, but Sarah says she wants next gen to be the biggest. For that to be the case the next Xbox will need to be more than 10x in throughput


Now of course Sarah was not specific with these statements and she may be referring to the Series S and not the X. If that is the case then to achieve an 11x in throughput would require a a 44tflop machine, which would only be 3.6x more throughput than the Series X. Where as an 11x increase on the X would require a 132tflop machine, so we are talking about very different ideas here, the difference between a 44tflop and 132tflop console is huge.

Nevertheless even if the next gen Xbox is only 44tflops, that would still be 3.6x more than the Seriea X, which is greater than the 2x we got from the One X to Series X


She doesn't explicitly refer to raw power. I wonder if the biggest technological leap could be a AI chip (more likely as it directly relates to hardware) or some other breakthrough with cloud assisted computing.

I'm glad the event was a let down. It's not good for anyone if the rumours were true.
 
Soldato
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I still don't understand why MS haven't put COD on Game Pass. That could be a system seller. Plus the more people they have playing it on the Xbox then the more money they'll make from micro transactions because it means Sony won't be taking a cut of the sale.
 
Soldato
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I still don't understand why MS haven't put COD on Game Pass. That could be a system seller. Plus the more people they have playing it on the Xbox then the more money they'll make from micro transactions because it means Sony won't be taking a cut of the sale.

Might be down to existing contracts in place. Sony's exclusivity deal ends this year.
 
Soldato
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I think both Sony and Microsoft have tried to stay true to the concept of consoles being an affordable and accessible platform.

Unfortunately, rapid developments in components has been compounded by increased cost globally and this makes it a difficult proposition for their hardware development teams.

Having £1000+ consoles capable of 4k 120fps and ray tracing etc isn’t going to improve the game offerings because devs will always be limited by the lowest common denominator, and we have seen this in effect for the last couple of generations, and if I’m honest I believe it is part by design (IE the Apple model) and part market forces. Great games are what drives people to buy consoles, and splitting your market with multiple hardware iterations won’t help to bring innovative content with massive appeal.

I genuinely don’t believe this is a hardware issue but a game library issue.

Innovation has gone from most main developers because they have become corporate lackeys that are there to serve shareholders and this leads to repeated iterations of the same games and incessant remasters because they are safe and shareholders like safe. Safe is predictable.

Until there is a refocus on creating genre defining game releases and new exclusive first party IP, things won’t get better.

Focusing on more powerful hardware is somewhat missing the point.
 
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