We Talk Over the Microsoft E3 2016 Press Conference

Missed it this morning and been waiting all day for this to get posted.

I guess I'll get to watch this once I am out of work but why does that X1 controller say Playstation on it?

Missed this morning too due to being at work so I wanted to catch up on what I missed.

The hardware stuff looks cool; probably switch to an Xone controller for my PC just for the colors.

@merxworx01: MS revealed that they're doing custom colored control schemes from their new Xbox One controller (you can check it out here). They also let you do a custom laser engraving and Jeff was messing around to see if you could request to have 'Playstation' engraved in it. It turns out you can.

@jeff@austin_walker Yo dudes, Laura Bailey voices Rise in most of the Persona 4 games (Dancing All Night being the exception). Chie's replacement VA is Erin Fitzgerald.

@visualizer: Thanks, that make sense. I thought it might have been some weird overlay and the words somehow got remained on the screen an they screencapped the visual anomaly.

omg thought you guys were kidding about videogames.com and nuke.com.

Where the fuck was Mechwarrior VR for occulus on scorpio? Microsoft put this on the list if your're finally building one. Also for fuck sake, let Rare do another Banjo game.

I hope Dan offers Austin twinkies for years to come.

Do... do these guys seriously not know what High Dynamic Range (HDR) is? NONE of them?

Just to add, the color thing is kinda cool for the new controller. It would be even sweeter if they let you customize an Xbox one S with a similar scheme to match your new controller though.

Why does Dan keep offering Austin Twinkies? Did I miss something?

The MS showcase seems like an advertisement for multiplatform games except for a few core franchises.

The real question is how much is Project Scorpio going to cost? An 8 core CPU, 6 Teraflop GPU, and 32 GBs of RAM is already jacking the way up. Do console player want to spend that much on a console? Without counting the Motherboard, PSU, and any type of cooling you're already looking at a PC that would cost well over $1,500. I'm pretty sure those specs still have trouble running 4K at a consistent framerate on PC's as well.

@sarriss: Running joke between them.

@fightingfalco: I'm guessing this will only be possible because of AMD's Polaris/Zen architecture, which focuses on bringing crazy powerful GPUs/APUs to the masses at an affordable cost. The recently announced RX 480 has around the power of a GTX 980 @ $200 retail. Soon they will reveal their answer to the $600 GTX 1080 that I imagine will be even cheaper. And the GTX 1080 is already a steal for that much power, it basically does 4k 60 (with a few compromises here and there.) At these prices right now, it's not crazy to see that in a year it will be even cheaper. Now imagine that the biggest customers that AMD has (MS + SONY) decide to work with them to develop these new consoles. They aren't paying what we are for this tech, they are paying less. This is why I think it's totally plausible that they could release a $499ish console that almost keeps up with a $1500 computer of today. Especially if they decide to initially forgo profit per console for market share.

TLDR: GTX 1080 is 4k 60 capable, and a really good price, Polaris/Zen is potentially even cheaper for similar performance, we are talking over a year from now (Moore's Law), and MS and Sony are AMD's biggest customers and are not about to pay newegg prices for components.

Cheap powerful GPUs/APUs = Affordable 4k 60 consoles.

Not to mention that you don't need 8 core CPU or 32 Gb of ram to do 4k 60. Quad-core, 16Gb ram and a 980/980ti/1070 sli or a single 1080 will do just fine for now.

@fightingfalco: You can make that system for under $1000. I got bored and made this list really fast. http://pcpartpicker.com/list/RP6P6X $960 and it would be $200 cheaper if you used AMD's new gpu but thats not out yet.

Just bought a 960 GB SSD for $210. Prices are indeed coming down.

No, Creative Assembly did not do the first Halo Wars, it was Ensemble

http://videogames.com

they weren't kidding.

Me too lol, they totally have those URLs, that's hilarious.

well they do have multiple platforms. Its pretty obvious that Xbox is no longer just a console for them

"HDR Gaming"

If that stands for High Dynamic Range it instantly is one of the dumbest marketing terms I have heard for a gaming system.

HDR means a scene has a lot of bright light and a lot of areas in shadow, this is for photography where cameras can struggle to capture all the data, some cameras have more dynamic range than others which means you can get a cleaner (less noise), more detailed image when trying to balance the bright and dark areas.

With video games, they are making the scene themselves and they aren't limited by the technology of a camera.

I typed more on this than a reasonable person should...

@michaeldim: Yup, nuke.com too, heh.

Great explanation, it's a weird sell because it's one of those things you can't really understand unless you see the contrast.

But the real nerdy question is...is this going to be HDR-10 or Dolby vision?

Nice, they stole nuke.com and videogames.com from GameSpot. This article goes into the history of why CBS own nuke.com.

Also fun fact, nuke.com were the villains in the TimeTrotters series which starred Jeff and Ryan Davis back in the old GameSpot days.

Man I am so excited to be able to play Forza Horizon 3 on my PC. I might even buy a new computer to do so. (And to play DOOM at high settings)

I was totally expecting RULES OF NATURE! to be blasting in those headphones during Scalebound.

Microsoft's end game is basically Valve's current state. Valve dabbles in hardware but their bread and butter is basically a store/economy.

The day Microsoft decides to stop building consoles is the day they win.

A Happy Few, Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 3 are the games I'm excited for here. I would have gotten that Slim Xbox One, but there is no point with the Scorpio thing out next year.

@fightingfalco: $500

@mruk63: I could just be missing something, but is that build counting the price of the CPU? I don't see it.

@fightingfalco: Oh ya you are right. I was tired. The cpu is $200 so it's still under $1000 if you remove the GTX 1070 and add the new AMD GPU.

The LFG tool sounds great.

I don't have a Xone but on PS4 the communities stuff is great for someone like me that wants to play competitive games with a mic. It harkens back to Socom when people would actually communicate.

It also fixes the problem of 12 year olds calling you bad names in public chat.

If you join say the Overwatch community you can see all of the parties that are up and join one that says mature mic users. Join it and get your six people and then have a good experience without all of the BS.

You will run into annoying people for sure but it is much easier to kick them out of your group or just go join another group.

Everyone should look more into communities. I have made some good gaming friends by doing that.

I am feeling what Austin said about the chatter, I REALLY hope they tone that down.

That squad didn't shut up for FIVE SECONDS and half of it was expository!

Somehow the PC/multi-spec approach actually came across as a cohesive vision, which is a far cry from where Microsoft was just a couple of years ago. This is kind of what Steam Machines was supposed to be, but coming from the other direction.

@shovelface88: Omg, I love this site!

@amyggen: Based on what? Is there a podcast or a specific moment when this was started? Or is it an insider thing?

Seems like an insider thing to me Started with Dan offering Austin Twinkies and him declining a number of times, and then escalating to Austin bringing that huge can of coffee etc.

Did the press confrences not get archived chat? I really wanted to see the chat reaction =(

@confideration said:

I'm kinda with you but MS has been producing some god tier hardware lately. Surface, Surface Book, the Xbox Slim looks incredible. I'd be sad to see the stop making hardware just when they've figured it out.

Side note: I'll be getting a Scorpio for sure. Super excited.

2:08, Alex is bang on. The Scorpio will NOT be able to do 4k resolution, 60hz consistently with most of the games without a graphics downgrade. The thing only has 320GB/s memory bandwidth. It sounds like a 980Ti with some nice CPU's (Maybe AMD Zen?) but ultimately 4k, 60 frames AND modern graphics? It's just not viable.

The GTX 1080 card is 9 teraflops........ that thing can't do 60fps, 1080p in ALL PC games, right now, already. This thing will be capable of 60 frames at 4k, it'll have the HDMI chip for it, it'll be able to do it even for a few basic games but not all games. No chance.

• GTX 1080 = 8.9 teraflops
• Xbox Scorpio = 6.0 teraflops
• PlayStation Neo = 4.19 teraflops?
• PlayStation 4 = 1.84 teraflops
• Xbox One = 1.31 teraflops

#TERAFLOPPYNATURALS

>Look at that HDR.

I don't know why, but Dan fucking got me with that one.

2:07:22

Nice read; thanks.