MS Admits Xbox Has 'Lost the Console Wars', Battles for $69B Activision Buyout
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My friends had PlayStations…
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I do agree that Microsoft's software is a better experience than PSN, and cloud gaming via Gamepass is quite cool.
Stats I read online paint a similar Sony(1st), Nintendo(2nd), Microsoft(3rd) picture but put it more like 45%, 28%, 25%, meaning MS has hardly "lost", but rather is just in third place.
When you take Nintendo out of the picture and look strictly at Sony and Microsoft, the numbers look so much worse for Microsoft. Unless they can score some important exclusives, I just don't see them continuing to produce future generations of game consoles. So all of you fighting this merger, I hope that you enjoy your Sony game console monopoly.
Should that be the GameCube? It’s successor the Wii was went they stopped trying to keep up tech-wise.
Maybe Microsoft should reconsider if it really wants to make a game console.
MS is just looking for arbitrary fiat economics wins. Big corp just needs us to keep showing up, as its ability to point at how many people were convinced to give up their agency to build their moat makes primates hallucinate big corp is central to literal existence of reality.
It’s not mired in fantasy imagery like religion but modern economics is still social gossip.
Also, the Fable franchise is on its way to return (from the Forza Horizon dev studio Playground Games).
(Plus Starfield, whatever is next in Elder Scrolls, whatever is next in Fallout, new games soon from Obsidian and inXile neither of which are currently using the franchises that made them most famous as both are trying to build new ones. That's a massive ownership over "Western" RPGs, lacking mostly "just" Bioware. [Microsoft tried to buy Bioware before EA did. That would have been a wild ride.])
If MS also acquires Activision then Call of Duty also becomes an Xbox exclusive.
All 3 of those are massive franchises in the US Market (arguably much more than Weeb/JRPG content which is split between PlayStation and Nintendo)
nah. those franchises will die if that happens, esp. since modding and community is a big part of their continued success.
Also, Xbox has pushed more of its "exclusives" to Digital First or Digital Only, especially its "weeaboo" games, so Gamestop is an increasingly disconnected view of the Xbox. You may get a much better view of "exclusives" looking at Xbox Game Pass lists.
everyone is on pc at 240 fps and performance graphics.
Okay that seems beyond unnecessary.
playing on 240 fps feels extremely different. it’s about how the occasional rapid movement feels. spinning around, or making a series of edits in a fight.
in a typical interactive movie type game with a controller, the maximum delta-v of camera or character is very low. 60 fps feels smooth the same way movies are fine at 30, a lack of low latency high delta interaction.
in fortnite with a 24x48 inch mousepad, delta-v peaks pretty high, and when frame time goes above 4ms, you notice.
low latency interaction makes the world feel more real in a way graphics can’t. graphics are important, but secondary.
But 120 to 240? Really?
the other part is frame dips. no matter the game, frames drop sometimes. a drop from 240 to 180 will be harder to notice than a drop from 120 to 80.
4ms consistent frame time is a challenging engineering target.
whatever game dethrones fortnite will improve client side performance and reduce the effect of server ping on client side interactions.
in fortnite competitive play, as soon as too many players are in the same part of the world, client and server performance goes south fast. in typical casual play, this never happens. in competitive play, it always happens.
i’m exploring gamedev out of curiosity for this exact discussion. the metric i’m trying to optimize for is minimum frame rate[1]. frame rate is top left, min on left, average on right. video is 120 fps.
i’m not sure yet what’s possible in varying scenarios of complexity, but there is definitely room for improvement!
most interesting so far is how fast physx is. graphics are the bottleneck, not physics.
regardless of epic’s earning potential across various demographics of gamers, the most interesting demographic to me is those who are playing 240+.
that group is passionate, dedicated, and always raising the skill ceiling.
maybe some new game company can target that niche with a high performance game and a different revenue model. pay to play could be good, like quarters in an arcade machine.
game servers are a cost center to all these companies, and this has a tangible negative impact on the gaming experience.
even gamedevs at epic are probably seen as a cost center.
epic’s profit center is the army of inhouse artists turning out endless digital balenciaga.
i haven’t played, but fortnite on switch will be a very different experience. all your opponents will also be on switch or android.
i’m sure it’s still tremendous fun, but get yours kids a pc on 240 have them compare the experience for you.
i imagine it’s like renting skis vs having your own, except more so.
I have no doubts that 240hz on a PC is an incredible gaming experience for any game that supports it, but Fortnite is very playable and enjoyable on considerably more modest hardware.
it misses however what might be possible if a game targeted only high performance hardware.
240 monitors are not expensive anymore, and the typical fortnite build is highend cpu but not gpu. 240 is not as affordable as a ps5, but it’s not as unaffordable as a supercar.
in fact it may just be the supercar for the masses!
I have an M1 Mac mini...that thing is not playing Fortnite at 240 hz ever, so I'd need the whole shebang. I'm a filthy console gamer though.
But when I look into it it seems that only competitive players are running fortnite at 240fps. Casual gamers (ie the real "everyone") certainly do not.
Going by the Steam Survey, a good chunk do have a PC capable of running fortnite at that speed (if you limit yourself to 1080p ultra low graphics), though the majority cannot and very few (relatively) gamers have a 240hz monitor to benefit from it.
my belief is that a significant minority of players have 240 fps monitors.
i would be very curious to learn the real number. i would guess 2-20% of pc fortnite players.
my assumption is that the majority of these aspire to be competitive players, or to play at that level casually.
the number of players with greater than $10k lifetime earnings is tiny.
fortnite is somewhat unique in that to participate in competition for money all you need is to be 13 years old. there is no need to join an organization or seek franchise. any motivated individual can participate from home without any 3rd party entanglement.