Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

I really like what MS is doing with the Series S/X. I don't play video games all that much but when I do, I like turning on games that make me nostalgic for when I was a kid. So far I've bought a number of older games off the Xbox store and for games that aren't available I run the Xbox in dev mode and run a PS2 emulator.

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.

> 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 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.

> that xbox dev is standardized on the S stopping the X from showing it's capacilities

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.

>Sony's IP library is starting to get milked dry, in comparison.

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.

Unfortunately it would seem that way. I don't want to point fingers, because ultimately the entire industry is going through it right now and it's really a tough time for everyone. That being said, it's a good way to frame the discussion around how successful these big-budget games can be, and whether it's even worth the risk. Digital Foundry had a great discussion on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvTQF00qtNY

Sony never had an IP stable as strong as Nintendo, their exclusive have been selling like hot cakes this generation and lead their selling lists, and sales of respective consoles shows a clear preference from gamers.

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 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.

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

If you don't mind, what are some other examples of games eschewing Xbox for performance reasons?

In a AAA game, written in the past 15 years or so the CPU is used to handle I/O (controllers, network, "HDD" etc) and, sometimes, sound (the more modern GPUs have low latency cores to work with sound but a plain old PS4/Xbone has too much latency on the GPU to work with sound). On PC the CPU is affecting game performance because there are many layers of data transformation between the userland game and the data that GPU reads and all these are processed on the CPU, but on a console the game writes the native GPU command buffers and surfaces so there is no intermediate processing so CPU is pretty much irrelevant as long as it's fast enough to write couple megs of command buffers per frame and not skip interrupts from the I/O devices.

The Series S can be had for $100-120 on Craigslist. It’s the perfect travel console with Game Pass and an external screen so I can game anywhere.

I agree that using upscaled graphics in PCSX2 make them more playable on a modern large TV (Looking at you Gran Turismo 4 in 8k60fps) but I think - because the games _were_ designed to be played on old CRT TVs with scanlines - using an older TV makes the games feel much better. I'm planning making a retro corner with an old TV and older consoles instead of just playing on scaled up emulators.

>using an older TV makes the games feel much better

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".

What makes a CRT "good" by today's standards?

Insane FPS refresh rates. A different lighting technique that kind of blurred together the pixels in a vague antialias. Less tearing than their potentially cheap TV.

Clarity, brightness, size

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