RIP Unity. First they partnered with Ironsource. Who are the people behind InstallCore it’s a wrapper for bundling software installations. It tricks people into installing enough browser toolbars and other bloat to hurt their PCs. Windows Defender and MalwareBytes blocks it. Now Unity does this shit.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just release both Xbox versions without split screen and then try to patch it in later. That way they’d satisfy the feature parity requirement (as I understand it) and people could at least play the game. I love that they’re still doing split screen despite it seemingly having fallen out of favour these days, but it’s hardly an essential feature.
True, but I feel like not releasing the game at all is even worse. The consensus seems to be that PS5 already has better exclusives and now you can’t even play one of this year’s best third party games on Xbox.
At least this way they can blame it on the S instead of just being the ganked version.
I remember when Mortal Kombat came out censored on the SNES and uncensored on the Genesis, not a technical limitation, but a policy limitation. Not a good look.
And “just being the ganked version” in this case would mean not having a single feature that the vast majority of players likely wouldn’t even have used in the first place. Yes, it’s not good, but the choice here is between either locking your players out of that one non-essential feature or locking them out of the entire game. And the second option is, to me, very obviously much worse.
And it’s also not like it would be the “bad” version forever. They can just patch it in when they get it to work. And let players decide for themselves whether they want to get the game now without split screen or wait.
They COULD blame it on the S, but, again, Microsoft won’t allow it.
I don’t get how blaming the S for a delayed feature would be different than blaming the S for a delayed game, which is what they’re doing right now.
But I definitely agree that this is bad for Microsoft and they should do something about it. Not sure whether dropping the S would be the right call but they definitely need to reconsider the feature parity requirement policy.
The S was just a bad idea from the get go. The Xbox One X introduced 4K gaming, 4K televisions are dirt cheap and the defacto standard now, why bother doing an under-powered 1440p machine? Even if you wanted a cheaper option, it doesn’t make sense coming out with a machine that belongs in the last generation, not the current one.
They should have gone the Sony route… Series X, Digital Series X. $499/$399.
If they wanted a $299 box, keep the One X alive for 1-2 more years then kill it. Still a better choice than the Series S.
Yeah for sure. I agree that pushing the One X as the cheaper/entry level version would have been much better. Even for much longer than 1-2 years. People wouldn’t get as mad if they gradually started to phase it out and stopped releasing the high profile games on it after a few years while still supporting it somewhat. Even the feature parity thing wouldn’t have been that much of an issue if they’d just clearly communicated an expiry date beforehand.
As far as I can tell the article only talks about a feature parity requirement between the Xbox Series S and Series X versions. And that could be met by just dropping the feature from both versions.
They may or may not have the requirement anymore, but they definitely used to have this parity clause as well. Then if it came to other platforms first and Xbox later, the Xbox version had to have bonus content beyond the original release.
I also thought they might have such a requirement but I was unable to find a source that confirms (or even mentions) it. Definitely still possible though.
they are not allowed to have one good version and a crippled version. they absolutely are legally allowed to just cripple both. “but the ps5 will have split screen!” well then, sucks to be you if you bought an xbox. think microsoft for that, sony consoles have nothing to do with it. or microsoft could just admit to themselves that expecting a next-gen game to run equally well on literally-worse-than-last-gen hardware is just a pipe dream.
It’s hard to communicate it to the consumer. Far from everybody follows this discourse surrounding the game. Maybe someone buys BG3 just for the split screen capability, just to disappointingly find out that the Xbox version doesn’t support it. Especially when they already have paid full price for the game.
That’s a good point, but I feel like there are reasonable solutions for that like a disclaimer when buying the game digitally. For the physical version they could either put a sticker on it or just delay the physical version only. I also think that people who are informed enough to know about specific features like that are more likely to hear about this discourse.
While I was disappointed we didn’t get a badass Zelda to play in Tears of the Kingdom, I’m glad there’s at least something focusing on her. Since it’s giving ALTTP vibes I’ll probably give this a play at some point.
And how would you recommend they optimize a game so they can render it twice in split screen, when the S only has 10 Gb of RAM? Because that’s the issue here.
It’s obviously impossible for me to recommend specifics without seeing their code and data. But a lot can be done in 10 GiB with some effort and clever resource management. They might have to make fundamental changes to their engine if they didn’t plan for such constraints ahead of time, so maybe it won’t happen for this game. But what they learn through this experience could benefit their future work.
We get it, you’re a huge xbox fan and you’re disappointed it doesn’t have a release date. But let’s be clear here: this is 100% on Microsoft. Larian has made it clear they aren’t happy with the level of quality of the game on the S (believe specifically for split-screen) and they are holding out on a release date until solutions can be found. That is 100% their right, and you better believe if they released with a shitty performing S version there would be tons of articles, tweets, threads, etc moaning and calling them out on it (instead of the universal praise it is currently receiving). If Microsoft really wants the game on their console sooner they have options: They can help Larian get the S version running properly by providing developers/knowledge/tools/etc, or they could allow for games to have exceptions for certain game features on X vs S.
If anything, Larian have gone above and beyond what most other larger AAA companies put out: Cross-play, cross-save, DRM free, and a huge open-world full of enough options and branching paths to put basically every other RPG to shame. It’s clear they want to deliver a great game that has everything possible they can put in it to please their customers. And part of that is not putting out a crappy version of the game. If you don’t like it, maybe take it up with Microsoft; or wait patiently and see if they can’t optimize and get things figured out once they game releases on the other platforms and they can spend more time focusing on the xbox platform.
There’s two views I see here from a software engineering perspective: multi-targeting devices with different specs can get really hard, and that modern development consumes resources in excess.
View 1: If you design a device that won’t catch up to modern expectations (limited, shared memory being the factor here), don’t expect to run all of the games. Some (or most) games will demand a certain level of resources. Microsoft either expected their status to swing their will upon the developers or were willing to help but just flopped on predicting what would be needed over the device lifetime. It’s a hard job, balancing developer need and cost. The hardware developers did their best. This comes down to
View 2: It’s an old coot viewpoint, but goddamn are modern computer programs are bloated pieces of mess. This is NOT an insult to the game developers, but it is to the OS and the engine developers as a whole. The entire programming industry has assumed that bigger more betterer computer always gonna come in a year or so. So now we have gigabytes of unused HQ textures in game downloads for no reason. Windows OS with Chrome takes gigabytes of RAM to display a webpage. We went from ultra strict data streaming to CPU rates for Crash Bandicoot to an NVME SSD shoveling half a terabyte a second when you want it in the Xbox Series X. This has left those who cannot afford strong PCs (note: most of the third world) and now consoles from playing the latest and greatest games. Developers leave them behind by grasping at the end of Moore’s Law. If BattleBit can produce good gameplay with 256 players on a raw potato, AAA game engines should try and appeal to everyone now.
They can help Larian get the S version running properly by providing developers/knowledge/tools/etc
Iirc, Microsoft is actually trying to help them get it running on S. I wish I could remember where I heard that, but I’ve been reading and watching too much on the game recently to find it.
Mate, you’re not John Carmack. It would be a ridiculous assumption to think their developers didn’t take a serious look into optimisation before deciding to ignore the xbox ecosystem for initial launch.
To be fair fully maxed out settings on PC It’s only using ~4GB for me? I was surprised but that seems to be how it is. I have 32GB and was using roughly half overall on the machine so plenty available.
It’s hard not to get excited remembering how we found out about Half-Life 2. It was announced in a magazine that some random guy accidentally got sent a copy of early, then he scanned the pages and leaked it online. I think I was browsing some dodgy Russian website when I found out about it.
I tried the demo, but it suffers from the same issue that tight urban 3rd person view games have: A camera that jumps a lot when swinging it around due to obstacles and walls.
Was considering a new switch, but may hold off now.
Which tablets do you have in mind? I could not find any suitable for anything but phone games via touch screen and unimpressive battery, but I don’t really know this market
Love my steamdeck but it’s definitely not similar to a switch other than they both play video games handheld. Even the docked experiences are super different.
Great, the touchpads are amazing for mouse-related stuff while handheld. I can comfortably use mouse heavy menus with them. Obviously, a lot closer to a laptop touchpad than an actual mouse, but still a lot better than a joystick as mouse.
A Steam Deck is a PC. If you dock it, you can hook up a mouse+KB and a monitor, and use “desktop mode” (KDE plasma) to use it exactly like any other Linux desktop. Docked “gaming mode” makes it feel more like a home console for PC games (and emulators). It is even possible (though not recommended) to install Windows.
Playing portably, mouse-based games run pretty well. Games that use a lot of keyboard keys are where it gets difficult without using an actual keyboard.
You’d probably be better served by a retro handheld. A lot of them run android so you can play android games, but the built in controllers make emulating actually enjoyable.
Major issue is that the ones cheaper than a switch struggle with 3D games.
If you have the money, steamdeck is definitely one of the best bang for buck, but it’ll probably be more expensive than a switch (unless you can find a deal on a used/refurbished one).
Thanks! I am starting to think a steamdeck is going to be my solution. SteamOS on my tiny nongaming Linux laptop works perfectly for 2D or light 3D games, so I expext it to be fine.
Is geforce now any good? I tried the free version way back when and didn’t think it was as good as steam link. I then considered paying for it but the reviews I saw lead me to decide not to. It was a while back though so maybe it’s improved?
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