Super interesting read - I love the idea and had no idea this was part of GDC. Great column - and it'll be interesting to see or trace some of these or past ideas to control schemes in future releases. Cool to see how VR adopts things like Hello Operator - never have ideas and inspiration been so democratic in the gaming space.
color me interested but I just have too much else on the plate right now - between Overwatch and Doom + Uncharted and Blood & Wine - sweet overload. But also color me a fan of the splashes of color in this, and it's still cool that EA and DICE placed a bet on a somewhat niche game.
@laxbro19: I think you read into what I was saying far too much, and I don't know where you got that I was saying MS and Sony on the same level as Comcast because they simply aren't. They're doing far more for consumer faith than they have in the past, as well as compared to other industries and fields, and it's showing in features like backwards compatibility, cross-play/cross-buy, and other areas. I don't think it's also accurate to say that Sony or Microsoft are "weathering hard times" - even Microsoft who is behind in console sales to Sony, is up about 5 million units on the same pace the Xbox 360 had from the info I can gather. They really don't have an incentive other than what I said to offer some pack-ins like XBL or games - if the games that keep coming out work on both skus, that'll likely be their angle. You don't HAVE buy the new sku, but they'll more than happily sell it to you. It's the same idea that EVGA might do a step-up program but does Gigabyte, Asus, or other PC component manufacturers? Not that I know of (could just be ignorant of the info here) but they don't have an incentive to,
There's no scheming in what I said. The reality is that these are businesses - regardless of how much we want to put stock in them as being "for the people" they'll still make decisions based on multiple factors, and a major one that you correctly pointed to is consumer trust and faith, but they've also got to consider the ramifications. Three Red Light fiasco cost $1.5bn and that's just fixing a mistake to make things right for the consumers.
My point here is that business is business - there's an aspect of it that has to be consumer friendly, and it surely will be if they're going to actually bring out new skus in both 2016 and 2017. The fact of the matter is however that they don't need to give away the farm or provide an upgrade path. If Eurogamer/Digital Foundry starts putting up articles that games look decent on Xbox One and Ps4 but the Xbox1.5 version is the definitive console edition, on par with say a GTX970 on PC - the headlines across mainstream gaming sites will be "looks best on Xbox" - with very few people reading into caveats and whatnot - this leads to the standard consumer seeing headlines, walking into a Best Buy and grabbing the latest and greatest Xbox console. And all the while it doesn't matter what we think MS or Sony should've done - because we're talking about this in a frankly small corner of the internet that doesn't reflect the 18 million Xbox owners and the 40 million PS4 users.
If I'm Phil - we announce the slim redesign as a "available now" at E3 with a quick montage to either lead in or fade out of the presser - and in the coming months start talking about and showing the Xbox Scorpio or whatever it is and talking about the upgrade path in terms of "If you buy an Xbox One in 2016, you can pick up the Xbox Scorpio from a Microsoft Store for $100 off, get a year of Xbox Live Gold, and find these three titles to kick off your new experience" - the $100 off is probably a stretch but if it's tacked on to "only at a microsoft store" the chance you might pick up a controller or other game are a little greater and that loss is negated directly.
Even if they go full force with this, its a much more economical move for the consumer to go the PC route now that leaps in everything but GPU have plateaued. Meaning PC components will last you longer than they ever have.
Economical, definitely but not necessarily the probable move for most consumers. While I agree with most everything you said there are still a crazy amount of factors out there. The reason a solid chunk of people - not just hardcore gamers, or even the fairly interested consumer, but mainstream purchasers go with a console is because they don't have to mess with it. In more cases than not "it just works" without having to select if you want AA or if you want to turn down shadow quality - they want The Witcher to look like it did in the sizzle reel. So while yeah I agree it's more economical, the point is that there's a huge market that doesn't give a shit - if they see that No Man's Sky is coming out for PC and PS4 - smart money is that they'll pick it up on the PS4 because they saw the logo. There's still a barrier to entry for PC builds these days, and it can seem impenetrable to the person that walks into a Best Buy, throws a PS4, a controller, and Call of Duty into their cart and happily puts the square plug in the square hole and fires it up. Just look at the PC forum here on GB - it's intimidating for the first timer, and god help you if you put a "looking to build a PC" thread up almost anywhere.
While I agree with most everything said there are still a crazy amount of factors out there. The reason a solid chunk of people - not just hardcore gamers, or even the fairly interested consumer, but mainstream purchasers go with a console is because they don't have to mess with it. In more cases than not "it just works" without having to select if you want AA or if you want to turn down shadow quality - they want The Witcher to look like it did in the sizzle reel. So while yeah I agree it's more economical, the point is that there's a huge market that doesn't give a shit - if they see that No Man's Sky is coming out for PC and PS4 - smart money is that they'll pick it up on the PS4 because they saw the logo. There's still a barrier to entry for PC builds these days, and it can seem impenetrable to the person that walks into a Best Buy, throws a PS4, a controller, and Call of Duty into their cart and happily puts the square plug in the square hole and fires it up. Just look at the PC forum here on GB - it's intimidating for the first timer, and god help you if you put a "looking to build a PC" thread up almost anywhere.
The bottom line in my little rant there is that MS and Sony HAVE to do this to stay relevant and be able to allow devs and pubs to make better games - not just prettier but more advanced AI, more stuff going on in the 1's and 0's than is just surface level. The harsh truth is that when these consoles came out they were borderline underpowered - and still struggle to hit 1080/60 - and now tastes and expectations are rising, but they can't sit back and let this generation happen to them. They have to do something and even though it sucks that the model is changing, and people in general will be slow to adapt, there will be plenty of "this is bullshit" posts and stories - things have to change. I don't see them doing the upgrade path or discounts unless it's some sort of game or XBL/PSN concession just because realistically - they don't have to. They can release the new hardware and people will either wait to buy the new thing, or they will pull the trigger on the old thing. The trick is as long as the games work across a few of the iterations (as the iOS examples point out, good luck getting new games on your 3GS). The other side of that is to still be able to play a few games down the road.
I just hope smarter people than I are creating solutions to problems I can't think of yet. Seems like Phil is steering the Xbox/PC ship in the right direction and making some drastic choices - hopefully that all continues and we can enjoy more of, as Vinny puts it, THE GREATEST TIME TO BE PLAYING GAMES.
A great read and review - and I share the sentiment with a solid count of people that there are some great concepts here and they. just. keep. missing. Love the referral to Man in the High Castle and really hope that someone that gets the time to craft a good insurgency story with the Homefront name because I think there's a lot of good stories to be told there.
Didn't view just yet but got some time in with this not too long ago - really liked the weather anomalies and the overall mystery vibe. Definitely interesting and seems the devs are updating it pretty substantially.
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