I think that just means not making any crazy technological decisions that will likely make games incompatible on future hardware. A great example was the PS3’s cell processor. It was excellent tech when used properly, but absolutley not “forward compatible”
Cell was just PowerPC as was the Xbox 360’s Xenon chip. PowerPC is all but dead now, but the same thing could happen to x86 or ARM in the future. No king rules forever.
I suppose, but in my mind, unless an absolutely revolutionary technology takes the world by storm, the industry wouldn’t just up and abandon x86 and ARM unless compatibility was decent. We’re talking ablut a world where businesses still use Windows XP because their software won’t work on later versions.
I refuse to build up expectations, the little I’ll hope for they will mess up. This is the same company that tried to make physical games unsharable long-term.
Which they walked back and hacen’t tried again since. Their latest console is also still backwards compatible with games from the first xbox.
I’m legitimately hopeful. Won’t ever stop the best option from being piracy and open source emulators on PC, but Microsoft’s track record for backwards compat is sparkling.
Sure, it’s not true hardware based backwards compat. It works by using the disc as a key to download and run a full copy of the original game + an emulation layer customized for the specific game, so if you don’t have internet or they pull the plug on their store servers you can’t just use the disk alone. If you lose the disc or it breaks, you have to buy the game again from their online store. Also, I’ve encountered some crashes and minor emulation issues with some titles. Poor, poor Kotor.
It’s sad, but that’s still leagues better than their competitors in the console market.
Sony makes you buy the old games again on each platform. Standard “Virtual Console” type shit. Thankfully, they usually do this by making a general emulator that homebrew folks can later shove non-supported games into.
Nintendo. Nintendo. Are you shitting me? An ongoing subscription to keep access to the same 30 year old games you’ve been reselling since the Wii?
You can use homebrew to shove other games in, but you risk a ban from their online services. Also, if you’re already doing homebrew, the consoles they offer games for this way on the Switch are more than easily handled by Retroarch running as homebrew.
Mario 3D All Stars? Take all the time and money to get a half port half emulation solution working on the Switch for one Gamecube and and one Wii game, sell it as time limited, don’t include the direct sequel to the Wii game that was built on the same fucking game engine in the package… and then never use that tech again? Are you fucking kidding me?
That last one shouldn’t surprise me too bad though. They managed to emulate the N64 on the Gamecube, and only used it for Legend of Zelda. Once in a limited preorder bonus for Wind Waker, and also in a limited Nintendo Power magazine bonus disc for subscribing.
There’s reason to believe that the next Xbox will just be a PC with a coat of paint, the same way that the Steam Deck is, and so this preservation team would, in that case, probably be built to legitimately emulate the Xbox 360 on PC, because that’s where the biggest compatibility gap is.
Emulation is the only thing that can long-term battle the difficulties of physical platforms evolving. Doubt x86_64 will be in main consumer hardware forever. I don’t even know if ARM will be forever. It’s all just a matter of timescale.
Like I said, they tried. They had leadership change, but at the end of the day consoles in general largely disrespect your freedom and are designed around it.
I do own several consoles and I like them for their emotional value, but I’m never going to trust lip service from ANY company that tolerates things like always-online DRM or worse: actively implements it themselves. (refer to figure A: latest Forza)
PS: I’ll admit I didn’t read all of your comment because by God that was WAY too much for 2:30am, but I’ll forget to reply otherwise and think I want to react to your initial statement at least.
Edit: Read the rest, my comment wasn’t to paint Xbox as worse than others (after reversing course), but rather expressing they all try to eat away your freedoms.
Backwards compat is nice, but only fixes self-imposed problems.
To be honest they’ve been doing this for a while with backwards compatibility so it’s continuation to make it forwards compatible as well. It’s a bummer they’re not following up with physical copies but it’s clear there’s been a lack of demand for Xbox games. Seems like they want to go the Steam route which I’m all for.
I wonder if MSFT would build an Xbox app that emulates Xbox, 360 and Xbox One on PC, making it possible to circumvent the need of cross saves/cross progression of older games. Currently it is annoying that you can’t just pick up a game on Xbox and continue playing it on your handheld gaming device for most games.
I’m somewhat excited for this one, curious to see what gameplay loop could hook me in. I can’t help but hope it will capture the same feeling I had when I started exploring Azeroth in WoW. I know it’s a proc gen world but maybe they figured out how to make worlds more lived in.
Onus is on them to actually release a good game, not on the potential customer to have any faith especially with their track record. Turning NMS into a decent game was the least they could have done.
Maybe but turning it into a good game was the least they could have done in the end for people who gave them money. That would apply to TDB devs too going forward.
While I am impressed that No Man’s Sky pulled a 180 in the end and I doubt they’ll repeat the same mistakes with this, a dose of some skeptism is always healthy.
Also, doesn’t hurt to check what the thing looks like at release–we just had The Day Before pull the ol’ switcharoo on people, after all–and how it plays when it’s out before making a purchase (looking right at Cyberpunk the game vs Cyberpunk the game that was pitched to people, here…no amount of “it’s better now” is gonna bring the game that was hyped up before release/used “Work in Progress” as a shield to life. Not without a complete rework. Could also apply to the above The Day Before too). By all means, believe that the devs learned, I really hope they did, cuz as a Fantasy junkie, this looks like something I’d really enjoy…but also be at least a little cautious in what you’re gonna throw money at
Fair enough. Just like Cyberpunk tho, they’ll never be able to give people the game they were hyping NMS to be. Unlike Cyberpunk, IMO anyways, it does get closer to it tho (and i give it brownie points because 1) they used the money they made and put it back into the game to fix their mistakes and gave these “expansions” to players for free, and 2) they never tried to downplay anything like CDPR did. They knew they messed up, admitted to it, and fixed it. None of this “oh, the game launched better than people make it out to be. It was just a cool thing to hate Cyberpunk” thing)
I only started playing it after they fixed the PSVR version. It’s a very deep game. I found the controls pretty infuriating for at least the first few hours of gameplay. I didn’t really feel comfortable in the game until about 10 hours in. But if I get that far into a game, it’s earned it’s spot in my library, especially as I got it for half off. I’ve got to say that it’s a very impressive game, but yeah I can’t say that the missions are completely holding my interest. My interest has sort of plateaued and now that RE4 VR mode is out, I’m playing that. We will see if I come back to it. But it was worth the $30 I paid for sure.
I keep getting tempted to try it, but honestly it doesn’t look like it would be my jam. I don’t want to build bases, and I don’t want to grind and collect resources. I’m kind of not into sandboxy stuff anymore. Maybe there’s more to the game, but that’s all it looks like to me as an outsider.
I am sorry but if any gaming journalist is not the least amount of sceptical about ANY release today, then they either don’t play games or are sleeping under a rock.
Without a doubt, Hello Games pulled NMS around and made it into a great title but this took years and we also have seen this blind optimism before with Cyberpunk 2077. Even a “wiser” Game studio can fail and not deliver.
Too many titles over the last years were lukewarm even highly anticipated and hyped titles either were “meh” or failed at release. The number of games that redeemed themselves is only a few and can be probably counted on one hand. A gaming Journalist should know about this!
So, I am not even sorry if I am not hyped about it. It does sound interesting but “I believe it when I see it”. There is too much time that has to go down the road for this to come out and there are a lot of things that can/will go wrong in that time.
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