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GI.biz: "The industry is looking at Sony to see what's next for the console business. At the moment, Xbox is the one providing all the answers"
- Thread starter Neat
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Ill undoubtedly end up buying both again (as every generation) but im more inclined to start with MS next gen just cause of that good momentum. My purchases will still work, gamepass is subbed till 8/2021, HW should be pretty much on par for both and well, Halo infinite day one. Hard to pass that up.
But sony will still have that edge on brand name alone.
But sony will still have that edge on brand name alone.
My understanding is they will offer remote play style functionality for Game Pass subscribers, but there will also be a separate service competing with Stadia?
with all those news about upcoming games, like Death Stranding and The last of Us 2, I don't see any reason to Sony put their own games aside talking about the next console.
It seems to me that someone is angry because Sony is unwilling to talk about the next generation and instead is focusing too much on the first party games.
It seems to me that someone is angry because Sony is unwilling to talk about the next generation and instead is focusing too much on the first party games.
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I dont think anything has been officially announced. But rumors are that if you dont use your own xbox as the streaming device, youd have to pay for xcloud since youd be using their cloud xboxes.
edit: there will be 2 ways to stream: Using xcloud to MSs xboxes, or xcloud to your home xbox. Home xbox as the server would be free.
Right that's what the article I read cited. The other vague thing is if you will need Game Pass to use your Xbox as a server. In which case Microsoft will be charging gamers for functionality that has been free on the PS4 since 2013.
I would assume that one of those options would be through gamepass but lets say on an iphone. It allows them to get customers that dont own an xbox at all that way. So yes, thats a safe bet that it will happen.
But they said that if you use your home xbox as the server, its supposedly free.
I don't understand how the author can go from this:
"Microsoft, which has done nothing but talk, talk, talk, talk all year long"
to
"...leading the conversation" when all the next-gen details we have are coming from Sony.
And in fact though Microsoft has done some great things late this gen with the X1X, the insanely impressive backward compatibility work including X1X enhanced, and Gamepass-- quite a lot really-- when it comes to games they continue to be all talk. Gears 5 being solid isn't enough to shake the argument that Sony didn't just beat them with 1st party / exclusives this gen, they absolutely crushed them. And TLOU 2 hasn't even come out yet. Xbox is actually firmly in third place in that regard in my eyes, as Nintendo's exclusive offerings as a whole are clearly superior as well. So this talk, talk, talk quote to me is a really good example of what they've been doing when it comes to games. I love Microsoft's vision of the future and the fact that they are dragging Sony toward things like Gamepass and crossplay. Don't get me wrong. But at some point they have to bring it with the games, or else it really is all talk.
I also do think Sony has a big challenge to deal with here when it comes to announcements/conversation, which is simply that the #1 thing Microsoft wants to guarantee is that their hardware isn't inferior this time. The more details they share the more Microsoft knows what they have to beat. In that sense the fact that they've revealed the SSD and the new controller details is actually quite impressive. I also think the 'maybe there's a Pro PS5 model SKU at launch' rumors, if seeded from Sony, are smart. Whatever they can do to make it harder for Microsoft to match and beat their hardware offering, the smarter.
"Microsoft, which has done nothing but talk, talk, talk, talk all year long"
to
"...leading the conversation" when all the next-gen details we have are coming from Sony.
And in fact though Microsoft has done some great things late this gen with the X1X, the insanely impressive backward compatibility work including X1X enhanced, and Gamepass-- quite a lot really-- when it comes to games they continue to be all talk. Gears 5 being solid isn't enough to shake the argument that Sony didn't just beat them with 1st party / exclusives this gen, they absolutely crushed them. And TLOU 2 hasn't even come out yet. Xbox is actually firmly in third place in that regard in my eyes, as Nintendo's exclusive offerings as a whole are clearly superior as well. So this talk, talk, talk quote to me is a really good example of what they've been doing when it comes to games. I love Microsoft's vision of the future and the fact that they are dragging Sony toward things like Gamepass and crossplay. Don't get me wrong. But at some point they have to bring it with the games, or else it really is all talk.
I also do think Sony has a big challenge to deal with here when it comes to announcements/conversation, which is simply that the #1 thing Microsoft wants to guarantee is that their hardware isn't inferior this time. The more details they share the more Microsoft knows what they have to beat. In that sense the fact that they've revealed the SSD and the new controller details is actually quite impressive. I also think the 'maybe there's a Pro PS5 model SKU at launch' rumors, if seeded from Sony, are smart. Whatever they can do to make it harder for Microsoft to match and beat their hardware offering, the smarter.
See this is the problem with the Game Pass vs xcloud proposition though. Game Pass is designed for people who already own an Xbox, and already own a lot of games. If Microsoft wants to offer game streaming to people who don't own any console, they're going to have to license a lot more titles. Stadia will no doubt have every title under the sun. PS Now is better poised to offer more titles (and compete with Stadia), because Sony can offer downloads to subscribers who decide to buy a PS4. Their whole user base will consolidated under one umbrella, vs having "casuals" vs "hardcore" gamers pushing against one another.
The free service part of Xcloud is basically just Remote Play. The paid portion seems to be more like PlaystationNow is currently. The question is will they bundle xcloud with gamepass or make it a separate sub from everything else.
I'm not a PS fan, but this is nothing more than a concern troll article. Sony has always been very smart in terms of communication and they really know how to market/sell their products.
They're already comparable to an extent, since you can browse and download PS4 games on PS Now and run them natively. The difference is effectively the quantity and quality of titles available, and that's where Gamepass excels.
Not really seeing the thing about the layoffs as the real point either. Point is that Sony isnt clear at all on what it wants to achieve and what it will be offering next gen. That's the whole issue here.
But go ahead and reply with a defensive statement about why they do have a message or better yet why they dont need one!
Its not that complicated to bundle both if the cloud servers are themselves Xboxes. if it's available on gamepass, I don't see what's so complicated about including that service through xcloud.
it's either remote play to a console you own, or a console you don't.
The eye toy was nothing new. Those types of games existed in the early 90s. Hell, Nick Arcade build a whole gameshow around them. Dreamcast also had a camera addon. And crucially, the eyetoy SUCKED. Like take everything bad about kinect and make it worse. EVERYONE played around with motion control tech before the wii. There were motion sensing addons for the dreamcast and even the n64 and ps1. Hell microsoft released a motion controller in 1998. Again, sony didn't do anything significant with Motion controls until a week before e3 06 when they wanted to steal the wii's thunder. And don't get me started on the power glove and sega activator.
"First console VR" is such an overly narrow superlative that I feel like you have to be aware of how low in the barrell you are scraping. VR already existed. There were multiple VR formats. PSVR didn't change anything or evolve VR in any respect. It was just the sony branded version of it. By all accounts it is the least impressive of the main VR solutions as a result of being tethered to a console instead of a gaming PC. Simply coming up with a thing is not enough to be innovative. You actually have to figure out how to make it work.
Remote play? I'll give you that one. Neat concept. Like a really early prototype for modern streaming services.
Now match that 1 peripheral function against nintendo inventing like 90% of modern controller functions as well as the game mechanics that would use said functions, and Msoft doing effectively all the heavy lifting for creating online gaming on consoles, with their efforts proving so influential they doubled back and became standard features on PC as well. Take away those two and the vast majority of how we play games today vanishes. Take away sony and we might get some different looking analogs or face button clusters. Almost certainly a big change in how games are marketed. But in terms of their creation and use? Very little changes.
Maybe that's a thing because MS has more to prove
MS fucked up their initial message this gen, and it cost them a lot.
They are trying to make it clear this time that whey won't fuck it up
Sony just needs to make a powerful console and deliver the games. Their message is already pretty clear.
MS fucked up their initial message this gen, and it cost them a lot.
They are trying to make it clear this time that whey won't fuck it up
Sony just needs to make a powerful console and deliver the games. Their message is already pretty clear.
Technically it's not complicated. Like I was saying, the challenge is the subscription model. So they're already charging GamePass users a lot of money without giving them access to streaming from a server. So if you only have to pay $60/year for PS Now, you get a big library of games, and you get every game via server farms, it's a far superior value proposition. Assuming they discontinue or substantially reduce the cost of PS Plus, Sony will be able to consolidate more revenue around adding games to PS Now.
I'm guessing to some ppl last gen never happened.
Sony's cross play policy AFAIK always had no cross progression, I'm thinking about DCUO, and I know that didn't. Don't know about FFIV..
It's wild how narratives can change, history gets revised. Yeah, MS did it more openly, but since they were against it last gen, we have no idea if they would have been more open back then. To say Sony didn't care or give a shit is flat out false.
Yeah, I don't know any other way to respond to that post than lol.
Doesn't innovate, push boundaries....then goes on to mention PSNow, PSVR. Amazing.
The layoffs is unfortunate. And probably deserve it's own thread. Why it was bought up in here is a head scratcher tho.
Is this what shit posting looks like? Everything I've read recently indicates that Sony's VR headset is the most successful enthusiast VR platform. It's sold through 4.2 million units as of March this year. What are you even talking about lol
ya but that's the same difference between any services. Will psnow include day1 releases of all 1st party games?
depending on what you wanna play, you'll sub to multiple services just like movie streaming is now.
The PS4 is still doing incredibly well with a big holiday season ahead of it. I'm not being defensive for Sony, I'm illustrating why this article is bad. It's a bad take, and it's clearly rooted more in personal response to something Sony has done than it is any real world information.
Sony is pretty clear on what they want to achieve next generation, at least where it matters. We know power is important (as illustrated by their last two drips of info), we know BC is important (as noted by the PS4 and PSVR BC confirmation), and we know PS Now will be important (as illustrated by their recent push in dramatically cutting the price nearly in half). We also know that they're working to make the jump from OS to gaming as seamless as possible, with an increased focus on the social aspects of gaming. Not to mention we know they're going to pursue PSVR2 down the line (likely two+ years into the PS5 life cycle).
I'm not even an avid industry professional who gets paid to know this garbage, so why is this guy so bad at his job? And why is he citing a single indie dev from a conference earlier in the year as a source of concern, when most of those points of concern have already been addressed in the last two months? It's absolutely transparent that the article was written explicitly to drum up ad revenue, and nothing more. It has so little merit.
The part of the article that is accurate (that MS has outlined their plans for next generation) has been extrapolated to "everyone is getting next gen answers from Microsoft"...and that's just ridiculous. Particularly when he begins citing small indie devs as his source for said info.
I'm talking about innovation. You appear to be talking about sales numbers. I can see where you got confused.
Right, I agree. You will subscribe to Netflix if you want to watch House of Cards. You will subscribe to Hulu if you want to watch Handmaid's Tale. But what Microsoft is proposing is selling a streaming version of Gears of War to people who don't own Xboxes. And selling a local version of Gears of War to people who do own Xboxes. They're not offering different content with different subscription services. They offering the same content with different delivery systems, each with their own fee attached.
Then there's the fact that funneling your first party titles into a subscription is problematic unto itself. How will that affect quality of the content? Are you really going to be able to finance multiple AAA, generation defining experiences for $10 a month? Theoretically you could do a tiered model, where you get premium games day of release for $20/month, but you still need to offer streaming and downloading on the same subscription. And then you're threatening to piss off your user base, when a AAA game comes out and it's anything but a 10/10 classic title.
Being the largest platform and early supporter of a fledgling technology IS innovation, bro. Like, how is it not? Lmao
They are a major driving force in normalizing and creating a market for VR experiences, full stop. You are bending over backwards at every possible point to make your garbage posts seem well reasoned, and in the process you're twisting yourself in knots.
Let's go with your logic even if I disagree completely. So MS was not innovating with any Xbox at all. Because everything already existed(you also spoke about devices outside gaming divisions arcade etc, ). You were wrong. Thanks :)
Either way, your post is full of nonsense and I don't know from where to begin. You said for example ''there was a Dreamcast camera'' and in fact the camera was used only for webcam/digital still camera. On the other hand, you praise Microsoft for online gaming when Dreacmast was the innovator...
ok I get it as I said ;)
well considering that gears5 right now is being played by a bunch of people who play on gamepass and didnt pay for the game, I'd say they are fully aware of this scenario.
I mean, the quality of their titles hasn't gotten worse. Gears 5 was ambitious as hell and more content rich than most games.
We are talking about consoles. In the console space is an innovative movement you like it or not. When it was out it had the less screen door effect and the best design for at least 2 times lower entry price than the headsets you suggest.
Its a VR headset and design is important. It's not about how good it looks. Many headsets are inspired by PSVR's design. If this is not an innovation then what it is?
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The Dual Analog Controller?
Shareplay?
Remote play?
PSVR?
PSNow?
Also, yeah, the Dreamcast was the first internet-connected console, but people forget that the PS2 had it's broadband adapter out a year in front of Xbox Live.
Yet their output this generation has been so paltry. I think Sony took the right tack by pushing indies through PS Plus, and then saving big titles as $60 releases. I'm in the position where I want AAA games to get bigger, not lesser. Adapting FFVII over multiple $60 releases is closer to the right tack than trying to fit multiple entire games into one fee.
Microsoft, who else? Netflix don't make you buy movies or a box to play it's movies on, and yet they still manage to make more than enough profit to create original content on a monthly basis. MS are still selling games and consoles, game pass and xcloud are additive to this.
Im not sure what part of this confuses you.
Well actually Netflix is deeply in debt. Their content quality has decreased precipitously over the past few years. They used to be at HBO quality. Now they're at like, CW quality for much of their content. And finally, games aren't movies/shows. Completely different investment in terms of time and money. We all know how technically demanding it is to construct a new game, vs shooting a film in a few months.
For example Red Dead Redemption 2.. probably one of the most memorable games this generation took 5 years to make. It sold bucket loads, and made a ton of money. But that's only because of the pricing model for standalone titles. vs Microsoft making a goofy ass budget game like Sea of Thieves. To me, it is damning that they want to funnel all their 1st party games into Game Pass.
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If you have an argument to make, then make it. As it stands you are just saying "i could totally take apart your argument but I don't wanna."
I specifically pointed out that merely doing something first is not meaningful innovation if you don't do it well.
I went on to showcase the long term effects various innovations have had on how we play games. Non nintendo, say goodbye to modern controllers. No microsoft, say goodbye to the majority of modern online functionality. Even if 100% of your examples (and if you had better ones waiting in the wings, you would have used them.) counted, what impact would removing psvr and the eyetoy and sony's motion control offerings have on the industry? Barely any. Sony, like most companies has dabbled. But few of their offerings ever became more than a temporary gimmick.
For the record, the dreameye was going to be used for games before the dreamcast snuffed it. And no, simply taking an extant thing and saying "I want a version of that!" is not innovation. That's imitation. eyetoy imitated devices that already existed. PSVR imitated devices that already existed.
The reason I bring up sega's efforts in online is to illustrate the difference. I'm showing that microsoft did not invent online play as a whole.That's called due diligence. The wonderful thing about opinions based on evidence and not on protecting a nebulous multinational from spiritual harm is that you don't have a problem with acknowledging stuff like that. Had microsoft just imitated what Sega did, I wouldn't have mentioned them. But they didn't stop there. They fundamentally altered how online play worked on consoles (and again, that even bled back to pcs). A single unified identity. Meta game elements like achievements. Broadband as a minimum back when it was the minority. VOIP as standard. unified feedback and matchmaking systems. Sony wouldn't catch on to how this would work for over a generation, and over the course of the ps3's lifecycle they would imitate most of it. Nintendo seems openly opposed to it for some reason. Xbox live is to sega.net what the analog stick is to the dpad.
PSN is the sony version of the Dpad.
I will never get over how the sony faithful leap to defend a corporation so aggressively. I hope one day to love a woman the way you love a multinational corporation.
The point is everything Microsoft is doing now is to help the brand grow. If you can have access to consumers in countries that don't have the option of buying an Xbox or gaming pc, then that helps them grow. If they can download an app on the phone and play Xbox games, that helps them grow.
They might not make a ton of money off gamepass and xcloud the first few years, but with new ideas most companies don't. You need to grow the market first. That's where we're at now.
And Microsoft will go through ups and downs just like Sony has and everyone else.
I mean, I think internet infrastructure is greater barrier to entry than accessing a consumer product like a game console for most people. Microsoft's theory behind their structuring of xCloud separate from GamePass, is more to capture a "casual" audience that finds game consoles unseamly. It's about marketing, and revenue streams, not about growing the Xbox platform itself. Again, if someone buys xCloud for Stadia like service, GamePass is a competing value proposition, not a complimentary one. It won't draw them into Xbox. It will make them an alternative audience that pays money to Microsoft.
This tweet is kind of weird. Maybe I'm not understanding the full context but this sounds like something I would say if I'm caught making a bad argument and I try to shift the definition of the word so I don't have to give up being right but also I'm coming across more softly committed to it than I originally seemed.
next generation is going to be interesting, I think each of the big three companies is bringing a refined vision to the table. This article seems as if it's trying to construct a narrative that really doesn't exist yet though, and I'm not quite sure I understand what the point of that would be.
Unless Sony offers all of its 1st party titles day one, then no they are not comparable.
This guy is nowhere near as bad as that awful hipster woman from Engadget, and her multiple articles justifying Xbone's "always online" plan.
This is so off topic but how many of Sony's games would they have to put up to make it comparable? And which one would be the analog for Crackdown 3?
My understanding is they will offer remote play style functionality for Game Pass subscribers, but there will also be a separate service competing with Stadia?
The "use your own console for streaming" will be free for everyone, because well, it's your hardware and bandwidth. Streaming from xcloud will certainly be included with Gamepass.