I nearly said “20” but then realized I’m almost twice that old myself and the NES is a couple years older than me. Friggin’ millennials. We’re ruining the aging industry too.
IDK, MS really went all the way with backwards compatibility. They literally built emulators for the 360 and OG Xbox in order to let people play old games using old disks they already owned.
I’d be shocked if they didn’t stay committed to this.
The rumored Series X refresh doesn’t have a disk drive.
It’d be hard for Microsoft to remain committed to game preservation in that way without them.
To me, this sounds more like they’re looking at Nintendo’s virtual store playbook and wondering how many times they can sell the same games to their customer base.
Surely it will help them reclaim their spot as the de facto fighting game console in a scene where many people use unlicenced controllers with Brook boards.
Not really, just let the game devs chose when to request that the console enforces stricter verification of accessories and otherwise just allow whatever
But if someone wants to do an arcade controller, this changes almost nothing. Just solder the wires on the contact pads on an official Xbox controller. Impossible to detect via software
Even the turbo button can be done, with an intermediate IC that transforms the signal from the button to be intermittent
the biggest problem plaguing the STALKER remasters is a strange bug that seems to cause the games to render at a resolution lower than what you set it as and then upscale it improperly, resulting in blurry, muddy visuals that persist even if you turn settings like AMD FSR Super Resolution and depth of field off.
Okay that’s… that’s not great, but should be fixable in a patch surely?
Another highly contentious change that’s drawn the ire of fans is the complete removal of everything Russian or related to the Soviet Union, including all Russian voice acting and localization, the use of Soviet rubles as in-game currency, and even every Soviet sign, statue, and landmark present in the real-world Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that were included in the original titles.
The versimilitude and basis in real world locations was a massive part of what made the originals so great, you can’t just scrub that off. I empathize with them, and I am personally firmly on the side of Ukraine but this sits really poorly with me.
The Zone’s supernatural mysteries are layered over recognizable pieces of Soviet iconography and rusting Soviet technology is a huge part of what gives STALKER its atmospheric vibe, and the absence of beloved voice lines like “Cheeki breeki iv damke!” just feels…wrong
Yeah I’m not touching these abominations. They even removed Cheeki Breeki? The single most recognisable thing in their games, the most prevalent and beloved meme?
But just remember that during the 360/PS3 era when MS were in the lead, it was Sony trying to by all consumer friendly, advocating online cross play and having free online service.
they have to find new ways of competing for business
Yeah haha. Regrettably doing right by the consumers because a competitor is.
Although I would not be surprised if they find a way to make a money pit out of it. (Such as not being chill like Sony and releasing on steam, forcing users on to the Windows store)
I’m still glad I paid for it when it was a good deal. It’s not like I was committed. The unsubscribe button is pretty easy, and I don’t need to play a lot of those singleplayer games anymore.
Does that include xbox gamepass core customers? Because that’s basically an entirely different service, and it’s also something you’d expect a very high adoption rate of among Xbox console owners, given the platform’s historical emphasis on multiplayer games. There’s also rather a lot of people who stacked many months of gamepass for quite cheap.
While the platform has certainly seen some success, it’s hardly in a dominant position, so making moves that make the value proposition of the service look worse is surprising.
I did no such thing lol. People had to be surprised by this turn of events based on the response to it in this very thread. Whether or not people are forced to continue paying for it has nothing to do with anything I said, speaking of straw men.
I got a ton of hate online when they announced the Activision deal and I said that though they’d get COD for “free” but they would almost immediately start hiking the price a lot. This has been obvious but some people refuse to think MS wasn’t going to try and recoup their $70B?
Eh, this is a case of them offering a better deal than actually ever made sense, because they expected the volume of subscribers to make up for it, but that never manifested.
They don’t; there was an internal tech demo that never went anywhere but was spread around online a few months ago with a bunch of misinformation that Microsoft was preparing to fight the Steam Deck head on.
Xbox takes a 30% cut from devs, has ads on its console and wants to charge a subscription for online gaming (now raising its price by 25%). Can’t triple dip like this, Microsoft.
Haven’t renewed PS Plus either since its price hike. Just gonna play disc games on my PS5 till the end of its lifespan.
I’ve never been one to play competitive online games since I have the hand/ eye coordination of a house plant, so I can’t weigh in on the advantages of blocking controllers that are “unfair”; but as someone who hated button mashing “A” in Animal Crossing, I can say that custom controllers can definitely have a place with a console.
In my opinion, this feels like Microsoft simply wanted more licensing money and is doing it under the guise of fair online play. It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.
Hopefully this does not negatively affect too many people.
The unfair advantage argument definitely holds water, mouse and keyboard can be like a sports car racing against a bicycle. But if someone had the budget to tackle this issue through software, it would be Microsoft. So I’m inclined to agree that it’s mostly just MS squeezing money out of third party manufacturers.
If they’d care only about the “unfair”, they’d put a fair, almost free, price on the official license that covers the cost of testing or whatever. Truth presumably here is also a bit more complicated, maybe third party controllers could be easier to hack resulting in an ineffective licensing system, idk. But yeah smells like money for Microsoft and a loss for consumers.
Wouldn’t the unfair advantage only hold water if they blocked unauthorized accessories only with online multi-player games and leave single-player experiences alone?
All HID input devices have identifiers that they communicate to the host to determine their functions. I guess you could potentially make a device that appears to be a controller and translates keyboard/mouse with a couple USB inputs. You could probably get a Pi to do that. But no one cares about winning on console that badly, they just go play on PC 🙄
Okay, then I’m going to default back to the fact that someone’s going to break the DRM and still make those devices, and this is only going to hurt people using accessible controllers.
You are probably right. Devices like these in the old days used to require you hook up an official controller to it to get past the drm. Likely will evolve back to that.
I guess you could potentially make a device that appears to be a controller and translates keyboard/mouse with a couple USB inputs
They control the console, the OS, the controller hardware, and can require the console to connect to them. They already have the ability to push out controller firmware updates. They can have the controller cryptographically authenticate to the console and push blacklists to the console of keys that get leaked (like if someone somehow extracts a key from a legit controller and uses it to make a knockoff).
One thing that kinda sprang to mind was accessible controllers. Ik Microsoft makes one and I’m sure there’s some approved but my thoughts are what if it doesn’t serve your needs
I wonder if QuadStick has approval. Specifically designed for people with minimal to no hand function, which their controller isn’t going to fucking work for.
I hope this isn’t Microsoft becoming more Apple-like. That said, if this leads to a restriction on the use of cheat-capable controller accessories such as the Chronos Zen then it could be a significant positive for FPS console gamers.
It reminds me of Apple locking faster charging and data transfer on USB-C to their own proprietary USB cables.
Are you sure of that? It was certainly rumoured before the release of the iPhone 15 Pro that Apple would require MFi cables for high speed data transfer but I don’t think that turned out to be true. As far as I can tell any high speed USB-C cable will allow full speed transfer from an IPhone 15 Pro. It might need to be a Thunderbolt 3 cable, especially for recording to external SSD, not sure, I’m no expert, but I don’t think it needs to be an MFi cable.
You’re correct about the specs of the device. However, after announcement/release there was controversy that the cable included in the box is only capable of USB 2.0 transfer speeds. But Marques Brownlee pointed out that the same is usually true with the included cable for Android devices too. I got a portable SSD to use with my iPad Pro and it just comes with a short high-speed cable anyway…
Edit: The included cable with the iPad is also only 2.0 speeds, even though it has a USB4 40Gbps port.
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