Xbox has a new team dedicated to game preservation and forward compatibility
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I'm particularly impressed with XBSX2 and PCSX2, I have an OG PS2 (fat one) but I seldomly use it because when you plug it into a big screen TV the graphics are all out of whack because it was designed with older "fat" TV's in mind. The emulators though allow you to upscale graphics which makes them so much more playable on a large screen TV. Granted there are bugs and various issues you have to get over and setting up the entire system can be a little challenging and time consuming but it's hard to complain.
And overall I think the Series S is one of the best bangs for your buck in the game console space, at $299, it's much cheaper than even the PS5 digital edition that comes in at $450. Though I bought mine back during the "PS5 Crunch" where the only PS5's you could find online were all resellers that marked them up 1.5-2X the original price, so $299 versus $600-700 was a great deal.
It's funny that you think that because it's absolutely right of course, and it's a big part of what killed microsoft hopes and dreams to "forget the xone era and try and catch back to what we achieved in the 360 era".
Unlike Sony, MS didn't make both console equal beside optical drive, they made the S less performant and then made it so any game must have every features on both S and X. What this means, in effect, is that player buying the S don't lose out, that game can cut features on Xbox (rather than have it on X but not on S), that xbox dev is standardized on the S stopping the X from showing it's capacilities, and that microsoft can't react to the ps5 pro let alone use the occasion to solve that early mistake because according to their own numbers something like 70+% of their sales are S.
Coupled with the complete lack of worthy first party or dedicated IP beside Forza, this destroyed Xbox ambitions. Microsoft is going all in on gamepass, and it might very well work out in the end (I don't personally think so not until their fix their internal quality game developpement issues, and it's starting to show cracks), but they're not doing it after a nice analysis but because they realized they've so absolutely lost yet another console generation.
I find it really hard to take this at face-value. The CPU power difference between the S and the X is negligible; it's the GPU cuts that are the biggest drawback. It makes sense to me that games on Series S get cut-back to enable playable performance, but I don't think the existence of a less-powerful GPU meaningfully limits the scalability of console titles on the bigger console.
> Coupled with the complete lack of worthy first party or dedicated IP beside Forza
That's just like, your opinion man. It's been nice watching Microsoft start publishing smaller titles in an age where the future of gaming is looking more-and-more bleak. Sony's IP library is starting to get milked dry, in comparison. The big exclusives are a Final Fantasy remake, a Demon's Souls remake, an upcoming Metal Gear Solid III remake... I've already played those games. The biggest reason I can muster to buy a PS5 is so I can play Bloodborne at a stable framerate. Sony used to have just as strong of a sell as Nintendo in this regard, but I think we're starting to see them fall from grace.
Didn't they just have huge layoffs at their major studio in London?
It seems like major AAA gaming might be going through a tough time.
At the end of the day, my point is not based on only my preferences but the actual numbers. Look up Xbox head he himself says as much : the last Gen was the worst Gen to lose, and they're terrible at making their own games.
It's not so much the existence of a weaker Series S that meaningfully limits console titles, but rather Microsoft's decree that games must have full feature parity on the Series S and X; they had to make a special exception for Baldur's Gate 3 to cut features on the Series S version entirely (split-screen co-op) for it to ship on Xbox at all.
The Series S exists as a way to try and entice people into the Xbox ecosystem by drastically undercutting the PS5 in price, but it _absolutely_ hamstrings the Xbox Series X because 100% feature parity is required between the two. We have literal proof it's why some games aren't on Xbox (or wouldn't be without Microsoft bending the knee and making exceptions), pretending it's not a millstone around their neck this gen is absolutely foolish
Outside a handful of enthusiasts, the vast majority of consumers are not gonna start buying CRT TVs back in their homes just to play a few vintage video games.
Especially that most CRT TVs are garbage by today's standards, and the ones that are indeed good are rare and sought after and command huge premiums on the used market.
Emulators are by far the more sensible solution for most even if they can't replicate the CRT "effect".
Can someone explain why this option is preferable to just playing what's on the disc?
Edit: Three immediate, simultaneous, and helpful responses - thank you! :)
[0] https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Fission
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/23/the-untold-story-of-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_ga...
All Xbox One games will run on the current Xbox Series systems.
EDIT: whoa that has original Xbox games too? Like classic Halo?
Halo 1 isn't one of them but they did do a remaster of that for newer systems at least.
Some legacy games appear to not support split-screen anymore, as far as I can tell from the store pages of specific Xbox 360-era games.
All-in-all, it's a subpar experience that I think will only continue to be disappointing, and the only real solution is to find used hardware and play the games in the manner they were originally designed.
Anything off the digital stores will be subject to alteration, sometimes just because they can, it seems.
I think the business people calculated that keeping the full game library available for the initial investment of compatibility APIs is totally worth it. It becomes a huge differentiator if Sony cannot/does not follow the playbook.
Sell your game on Xbox. Forever.
APIs don't mean much here as the Xbox 360 ran a completely different architecture, that's tricky to emulate reliably on X86_AMD64. Which is why Sony gave up on the idea of emulating PS3 games.
Details on '360 compatibility.
"...certain aspects of the Xbox 360 hardware design are indeed built into the Xbox One processor - specifically, support for texture formats and audio..."[0]
[0] https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2017-xbox-one-x-bac...
After that license period expires, they're no longer allowed to sell the game, unless they negociate again a new license agreement with whoever owns that IP now, which is often too much of a headache, and if they do renew it, it means a new release of the game for extra money to offset the new licensing costs.
Emulation works around that since it relies on users who already bought the content from when the license was still in effect, but again, it's and effort from Microsoft to provide the emulation environment which is something the likes of Nintendo and Sony abandoned, since it brings little revenue for the extra costs.
It's a lot more complex issue than just "all game devs = evil".
Too bad, maybe they should've thought of that before signing those contracts.
> they're no longer allowed to sell the game
The subdiscussion isn't even about sales, but about not breaking existing copies.
Think about what exactly? Nobody's gonna afford to spend money to buy perpetual licenses for a games that will be on shelves only a few years. What exactly do you expect they do better?
>The subdiscussion isn't even about sales, but about not breaking existing copies.
Nobody's breaking existing copies.