How about microsoft get xbox live back to normal after the hacks, its been terrible trying to play online and do party chat this last two weeks

"This game only runs on xbox one generation 3.". I fear that's the way this is going, or it could turn xbox one games into having a whole bunch of graphics options where you can change anistropic and everything to suit your specs, but that being said people buy consoles for relative reliability, not to futz around with graphics settings attempting to get a stable framerate. They expect the developers to do that work for them. Which I guess developers could have graphics modes for each model, but still I doubt this means consoles will finally be full 1080 at 60, developers will still push it and at the end of the day it'll probably turn out like any other generation performance wise with just a few bumps in the road because instead of switching to the new slim model, it'll be the new hardware model. I don't see this as anything to get any sort of hopes up for.

so long their PC games are not on steam, they are might as well not exist on the pc.

Upgrades wouldn't be bad if the console games had performance settings that were specifically tuned to each upgrade. If you don't have the hardware upgrade, it detects it and lowers settings to not make your Xbox explode. I mean, they already have auto-settings in PC games, carry that over to consoles.

If they upgrade the hardware, in parts that matter for performance at least, then there will no doubt be games coming out that have caveats that they only work on a generation 2 Xbone etc.

Bold move. In a way it could work. I mean people upgrade their tablets and phones every 1-3 years so why not consoles? But it would most likely turn out like the New 3DS with a handful of games taking advantage of the new hardware.

Thing is, if they're using the new app model the code won't run on anything but windows 10, and there's no good way for steam to not show you games you can't run on your windows 7 machine in steam. It'd be a huge fucking headache, guaranteed. With the store built in to the OS they know exactly what you can run and what you can't and can surface things accordingly.

As for upgradeable hardware for consoles that sounds like the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Just imagine the xmas the first titles that don't run right on launch hardware come out. There would be so much bad will generated from something like that, I can't imagine they'd be dumb enough to do it. Then again, I didn't think they'd be dumb enough to implement the always on stuff either, so what do I know.

I'm looking forward to X-Pak.

@honkalot: Yeah I think DSi and New 3DS kind of shown that this model doesnt work, at least for the handheld market, and both were/are very popular devices. I dont know if this is a good move for a struggling device.

Why the fuck would I buy this instead of a PC then? This is just talk with no real direction, and any direction will be met with contempt if it means changes to MS hardware. Feeling the pinch of lower resolution MS?

I only own an XB, and the differences are minor.

The terrible reality is that my first thought after reading this was:

"Huh, I wonder if this means we're going to get Red Dead Redemption on the PC".

Is it really so much to ask for the best Rockstar game on PC? Hopefully X360 Backwards-Compatibility will eventually communicate over to the PC.

But in regards to the actual article, i'm all in favour of companies trying something relatively new, and I don't think Phil Spencer would be saying this out loud if he wasn't certain concerns could be met.

I guess I don't understand the appeal of upgradable consoles. Why not just build a PC then?

Between this and the rumors surrounding the NX, I'm curious to see where hardware is going as we head into the latter half of this generation and toward the next.

Nailed it with the 32X and New 3DS comparisons. Exactly the first two examples I thought of as well, though the New 3DS isn't doing nearly as badly as the Sega endless peripherals ecosystem worked out.

I'm really curious how this could work, and unfortunately my expectation is that they're going to screw the pooch just because of their recent history of self-sabotage. I hope I'm wrong for competition's sake.

As for their PC platform or integration: No thank you.

I still remember having to create a separate account because logging into GFWL kicked my wife off of Netflix on my 360. This is to say nothing of how bad GFWL was in general. Plus it would just be yet another system to keep track of my game purchases on. (Insert about another dozen reasons here.) If they want that to work, they're going to have go far beyond expectations to make it happen.

I wonder if this will have any impact in the lack of Halo games on pc? If that happens we may see an increase or decrease in pc or XBOX users.

AHH Stay away Microsoft I don't want you gentrifying my ghetto pc haven.

I don't know their plans or anything, maybe they'd have good ways around that.

At least for me what I wanted more than anything out of Microsoft was stability. After all the flip flops and weird messaging that went up all the way through and beyond launch. It's hard to tell the good ideas from the bad and from the never gonna happen ones. It just keeps adding on complexity to something that I would prefer to be dead simple, and I'm pretty sure since a while that I won't be getting an Xbone since I don't know what it'll end up being in a year down the line.

I think there is a worse case than the one where this plan goes wrong and it is the one where this plan isn't attempted.

If (and it is a BIG if) it is possible to make increments to the Xbox hardware in a russian doll kind of way, where every improved increment can run everything that worked with the former increment via emulation of some kind then that seems like a laudable intention. Even if there are questions about splitting the user base, at some point user bases are always split and if you think of PC/Xbox gamers as just one big user base, then how it subdivides could become moot.

My PC and my console are interchangeable and sit next to eachother in my living room anyway. The more that they can talk to eachother and be useful together the better.

Has anyone said "Xbox 1.2" yet?

Yeah, this reminds me of the Sega CD, the Sega 32x, the Jaguar CD, the N64 Expansion Pak... none of which were signs of a stable system at the top of their game. Talking about having to bolt shitty add-ons to the Xbox One less than three years after release is really a bummer, and I don't even own one.

It sounds like a bunch of executives who don't play games and really have never dedicated years to playing consoles or PCs are making choices they don't REALLY understand.

It must seem so simple....it chips and drives and lights, right? So why not just make PCs and Consoles the same thing and allow the software to be interchangeable? That must be what's in there head, but I GUARANTEE this is going to be a hard lesson that, if they are thinking as I surmise above, will blindside them.

Understand its not that it won't work at all, it is that the certain amount where it does't work will will tear at the very things that make consoles pop-in-the-disc and what makes PCs flexible. It is the 'edge cases' that crop up where a console game simply crash that will be the death of a thousand cuts. It will be PC games were all the video options are gone and the ability to mod as deeply that will be missing that will drive gamers insane.

not impressed so far had to change my setting for all apps to install gears of war on D drive and ive downloaded about 4 gigs in half an hour also it does not show you how fast your downloading just a progress bar with whats left to get in GB. i bet i cant see my ping or a list of games in multiplayer as well. but i would love it if they went the route of heres your console it plays xbox games you can also play them on the pc why not give us the xbox 360 backwards compatibility as well.

If they are making all the Xbone library available on PC then it's pointless to get an Xbone, upgradeable or not.

People have spent years of internet arguments over the Xbox One and PS4 resolutions and split hairs over hitting 60fps. With a modular upgrade system they could, like PC owners, simply throw money at this problem and make it go away.

Though I expect people to balk at the likely pricing, with GPU upgrades likely not far from their PC equivalents. By the time MS rolls this out, an upgrade that just gives you 1080/60 might not be so pricy anymore. (Currently a good GPU for seamless 1080/60 gaming is probably in the $200 range, assuming the CPU's less than four years old) and the door will be open for 4k support. If you have the cash and the idea of a PC fills you with terror, MS will have your answer. I really hope theres space inside the XBO form factor so we're not building a Sega CD 32X tower of madness again, though.

The real unknown here isn't hardware, but software, which is where the unified platform comes in. PC development is very concerned with scaling, the ability to do smooth gameplay on a variety of GPUs, framerates and resolutions. On PC, better scaling equals a bigger install base, which means more potential sales. If Xbox developers carry this over, everything will work great If they screw it up and games run awful without an upgrade, or they ignore the upgrades entirely and just design for the base unit, it could make the upgrades either pointless or required, depending on which way they go.

@rafaelfc: Not to be rude or anything, but saying that is ignoring millions of people loving the xbox environnement (such as myself) that don't want to have to pay 1000$ to play current games. It's also ignoring the fact millions of people prefer to play their games in the living room, with a controller and have the console be an all in one entertainment system (such as myself).

If it's a 32X approach where they boost the existing hardware with affordable add-ons...well, it's not ideal, but I'd be ok with that every few years. History has shown that approach not to work, but maybe they could be the exception.

If it's a thing where every year or two you have to literally rebuy the hardware to get the latest features and/or play the latest games...well, that's it. I'm done with consoles, and probably gaming in general since I've never been that enthralled with PC-only gaming.

Do agree here. They have been awful at presenting just about everything since the X1 was first introduced. This may actually wind up being ok, but I'm definitely not liking what has been said so far.

To me this is a hint to what the next Xbox will be. I can see two maybe three years from now Xbox One relaunching as a PC / Console Hybrid. If he can convince enough developers to be developing for the PC a platform which requires developers to create games for a wide variety of different machines then then it shouldn't be too difficult adding a console into that line up. I would then expect an updated console every two years similar to an iPad or Surface cycle.

@robowitch: Don't you mean One.Two?

"Expansion Pak" is potentially copyrightable, or at least trademarkable. "Expansion Pack" is not.

@nashvilleskyline: well it was a more personal comment. I have a ps4 and a decent (not great) PC, I can play a lot of those games already there is absolutely no reason to get an Xbone since it will have no more exclusives going forward.

@rafaelfc: Yeah I can see that. I could say the same for a PS4 at this point seriously. I can name 1 game that has been worth owning a PS4 that is not on PC too: Bloodborne...and that was a huge letdown for me personally. I would also go as far as to say that before the end of the year, we will start hearing that PS4 exclusive games are being developed for PC too and eventually sold on their own PC plateforme "à la" Steam, Uplay an origin. In fact, I would even go further and say that they don't have any choice at this point to go this way too. That's where the majority of players is and it's not gonna change.

Yep - basically this. I had been telling myself I'd wait to get the other console that I don't own once a) it had enough interesting exclusives and b) the cost was low enough. Well I recently inherited a sizeable sum of money which eliminates b) entirely as a factor for me and I still feel no motivation at all to buy the console I don't own.

I have enough with my existing console and my pc. If there's something down the line that improves the value of what I have even further, then great.

The lack of conviction from Microsoft about what the Xbox One is supposed to be is just remarkable. I have no idea why anyone would choose an upgradable XB1 over a PC that can tap into steam, gog, humble and any other better marketplace. And I have no belief that THIS is the strategy MS will stick to when it seems to change its mind every six months. All this muddled announcement confirms is that I will be avoiding this thing.

I see what you're saying, but I think it's a little different. When you bought your iPhone, did you pay 400 dollars? 600 dollars? Probablynot (for the sake of this argument, you better have not! :D). Most people, like me, get phones with carrier plans. My iPhone was effectively 250 dollars. And getting a new iPhone next year won't cost me full price either. Definitely I don't think most people in the Apple ecosystem pay full price for phones every single year. Some probably skip years, most get them via plans and deals, and a very select few buy them brand new, full price.

At least in most places that I know of, this system doesn't really exist for consoles. So I just wonder how upgrading would work in a really practical sense (will retailers ship old XB1s back to MS? what happens to them?). If the XB1 was modular from the start, and had components you could pop off and add, this would make so much more sense.

My gut reaction was oh shit they just killed themselves. I guess we’ll see how this shit show ends.

Boy, the Xbox One simply cannot win. I cannot count how many times I've heard people complain in the past about how the Xbox One isn't powerful enough and should have shared functionality with PCs. Now that this is being addressed, somehow it's still a reason for everyone to shit on the Xbox One. The gulf between what the internet perception of the Xbox One is and the reality of the actual console becomes more massive by the day. Don't worry, though; it never gets old hearing people wielding imaginary dollars and pretending they were on the fence about getting an Xbox One until (insert wildly hyperbolic overreaction to latest Xbox news based on Miss Cleo-quality presumption of absolute worst-case scenario playing out).

As an actual owner of an Xbox One (a launch one at that), I think this sounds pretty damn cool. I personally don't get all up in arms if a game isn't 1080/60, but some people do, and for those folks, this should come as welcome news. Wasn't most of the internet to-do based largely on how supposedly "underpowered" the console is anyway? And for the PC folks, this news means that some great Xbox titles like the Forza games, all the Halos, et al. that haven't really ever been on PC will finally be available, with some really exciting potential on top of that for backwards compatible games on PC, streaming games from PC, etc. This looks really promising for both the Xbox One and PC. So, what's the problem?

Also, @austin_walker, I love you, man, but please take a second to really consider your last sentence in context with the rest of the article. Skepticism is fine (and fairly warranted given past Xbox One PR/direction failures), but you pretty much are assuming the worst here. As a major player in the gaming world, Giant Bomb has the ability to shape the narrative a bit, and I'm not sure anyone really needs another piece questioning/piling on the Xbox One, especially before we really know what this is going to become. It would be a shame if this was a non-starter because everyone dismissed it before it had a chance. As an aside, maybe I'm alone here, but someone writing an article about the Xbox One that wasn't negative would be extremely refreshing.

I'd also like to talk about an interesting point that was raised in the article regarding ambition. I'm not sure the gaming world actually likes ambition. I do, and a big part of the reason I love my Xbox One is because they've really tried to push the envelope with it. The problem is, going for it inherently means that there will be some failures along the way, which people have been utterly ecstatic to harp on. I don't know why people absolutely love playing Nelson Muntz, but they clearly do, and in the process everyone seems content to ignore 1) that a behemoth in the tech world is making serious efforts to innovate, and 2) that the Xbox One is unquestionably the most consumer-driven console ever. Hey, but Kinect bombed, right? Ha ha!

I don't know why big ideas are bad ideas, or why pessimism trumps optimism. When did we all become so jaded and cynical? If we're going to collectively trash efforts to push gaming further, then we don't deserve anything more than what's already out there. If we're going to endlessly lambast the console that's actively listening and responding to gamers, then we're asking for a bunch of corporate clowns to try to tell us what to like or guess (poorly) at what they think we'll like. People asked for this cross-functionality and for a more powerful console, and MS is trying to give it to us. I've got some respect for that (and for just about everything Spencer has done with the Xbox One).

Anyway, I've said my piece. I'll continue thoroughly enjoying my Xbox One, and much of the rest of gaming world can continue criticizing what they think the console is (from what they've heard) and/or how horrible they've assumed it will become in the future because Microsoft dares to try to give people what they want.

@billyok:
1st : the price. A console is 350$ with a controller and a game. A good PC worth the investment to play games is minimum 800$...and you will need to upgrade it every couple of years to fully take advantage of that investment.

2: a console is an easy to use all in one entertainment living room. PC is not that.

3: Microsoft has many great exclusives. Wether you like them or not.

4: An upgradable Console is the proof that they are invested in the console market, they wanna disrupt it and make it something it always should have been.

5: Can offer a curated store experience ( although...I feel the xbox store is getting more shit than good games). Steam for me is just a shit show right now. That doesn't help that I had my account hacked twice in the past 2 years and had to deal with the worst customer support I've ever encountered.

6. I could go on but I should probably get back to work.

7. People love to shit on MS. so...yeah

Xbox One Black you get a bigger Hard Drive and a HD DVD Player !

Well, if they are selling their games trough their own shop on the PC (user experience is hindered by the limitations that come with that), xbone starts to seem like a nice option?

(In another worlds, MS is playing "nobody will be happy"-tactic.)

From what I'm reading, I believe Microsoft's response to that would be something along the lines of "Sure then, by all means buy a PC instead, if that is what you prefer".

@notnert427: Excellent post dude.

Same. If there was some program to trade in an original Xbox one to get, say, half off the price of an Xbox with far better hardware, I would do it in a heartbeat. It still would be far cheaper than worrying about upgrading a PC every couple years.

You sum up my thoughts perfectly and wish more journalist would read your thoughts.
my gametag is Lynx67 if you wanna play some games and I too, have been enjoying the hell of my xbox one since day One. The only times I feel bad about owning the console is when I am really excited about some announcements, go online and see the negativity thrown at the MS. For some reasons...it gets to me.

Why don't consoles just stop and we all move to PC's? PlayStation branded PC's with PSN clients, imagine it!

I don't care about upgrades adding periphery additions to the Xbox One's capabilities. That's fine, but the moment you tell me my Xbox One can't play games as well as a brand new Xbox One is the moment I stop buying Xbox anything. I buy consoles on the faith that this machine will play all the latest and greatest games for that platform for the next 4-5 years. If you're telling me you want to turn my Xbox into an iPhone and force me to upgrade every one or two years then I'm out. I'll stick with PlayStation and Nintendo (and dozens of purchased Steam games I never get around to playing).

Cheer up, Austin. This is going to be great.

PC is a separate platform to consoles, don't get me wrong i'm all for linking them together in cool ways such as cross platform multiplayer and remote play, but if the first step you take in creating new interplay between the platforms severely impacts the ways PC's function you're doing it wrong, stop, think and try again MS.

It's risky. That's a good thing. MS needs to carve out a different space for the Xbox. Between this and its aggressive adoption of new IPs and exclusives, I think they are on the right track.

As long as games are playable across a variety of Xbox hardware, that's a win. You don't want to shell out some more money for a new machine? Fine. You can play the game at a reduced resolution/fps. It's not so different from from the mobile space.

I have many friends that will never approach a PC for gaming. It's just too complex, expensive, and quirky a space for them. They want the simplicity of a physically small console that they can connect to their TV and don't want to see launchers, worry about peripheral compatibility, install mods, figure out how to chat with their friends in a game if it isn't supported natively, etc, etc, etc.

I'd be surprised if this is a foot in mouth moment for MS. It seems more likely to me that this could be the effort that gives the Xbox platform its identity for the next 5-10 years. Whether you appreciate and buy into that is another story. If it gives players more options and brings them together across PC and Xbox platforms, then I'm excited for it.

1. I'm baffled by this point. Isn't this basically an argument for why a buy-it-once console is preferable to something you'll have to upgrade regularly? I'd understand your point if Xbox was the ONLY choice versus PC and thus the cheapest entry point to playing current games, but it explicitly wouldn't be under this plan anymore. Again, if I want a true buy-it-and-leave-it console, why would I get this instead of what Sony and Nintendo are making?

2. Not true anymore.

3. And I can play seemingly all of them on a PC. Especially going forward. Again, if I was in the market for an upgradable machine with the best games selection, why would I choose an Xbox?

4. Intentions are proof of nothing. Certainly not when compared to Microsoft's record with the XB1 and, PC gaming over the last few years.

5. There are multiple curated stores on the PC. All better-designed and better-populated than the Xbox store. Steam might be a shit show but it's plenty easy to find good games there. Same with Humble and GOG. The cream always rises.

6. Hmm.

7. It's not "shitting" on something to be reasonably critical of moves I don't like.

@nashvilleskyline said:@billyok:

1st : the price. A console is 350$ with a controller and a game. A good PC worth the investment to play games is minimum 800$...and you will need to upgrade it every couple of years to fully take advantage of that investment.

2: a console is an easy to use all in one entertainment living room. PC is not that.

3: Microsoft has many great exclusives. Wether you like them or not.

4: An upgradable Console is the proof that they are invested in the console market, they wanna disrupt it and make it something it always should have been.

5: Can offer a curated store experience ( although...I feel the xbox store is getting more shit than good games). Steam for me is just a shit show right now. That doesn't help that I had my account hacked twice in the past 2 years and had to deal with the worst customer support I've ever encountered.

6. I could go on but I should probably get back to work.

7. People love to shit on MS. so...yeah

@nonesun: My TV (a Bravia, natch) has Playstation Now built in.

One day I might even start the free trial...

@billyok: I disagree with every points you are making, but everybody is entitled to an opinion :) Have a good day