E3 2016

[Stevo985]

Ah Zelda.

The generational game that singlehandedly makes me purchase a Nintendo Console.

[The_Rev]

I've still never played a Zelda game, and I think I've had a machine capable of playing video games since the mid 1980s. 

[PieFacE]

Just now, The_Rev said:

I've still never played a Zelda game, and I think I've had a machine capable of playing video games since the mid 1980s. 

Same, apart from swap 80's for 90's  

[Davkaus]

I've never played a Zelda, Pokemon or Mario game. I jumped from Sega consoles, to Sony, then to PC, I've never had a Nintendo device. Zelda in particular does seem like the kind of game I'd like...I'm a little tempted to take the plunge, but I wonder just how easy it is to jump in to such a huge series at this point.

[PieFacE]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand MS have kinda just commited PR suicide again....  They suck at E3

Phil Spencer has said (and i'm paraphrasing) "If you don't own a 4k TV, then the Scorpio will do nothing for you".... 

Eeerrrmm... so it's just going to be Xbox One graphics, frame rate and resolution but in 4k?!?

[Davkaus]

It somehow doesn't put out better performance at 1080? lulwat? Are you sure they weren't talking about the One S which has 4k video playback but not better hardware for games?

Edited June 15, 2016 by Davkaus

[Chindie]

11 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I've never played a Zelda, Pokemon or Mario game. I jumped from Sega consoles, to Sony, then to PC, I've never had a Nintendo device. Zelda in particular does seem like the kind of game I'd like...I'm a little tempted to take the plunge, but I wonder just how easy it is to jump in to such a huge series at this point.

Zelda series is very accessible. There's no real ongoing storyline and the gameplay is simple (you have a sword and shield, you go into dungeons which are basically huge puzzles, in each dungeon you will find an item that becomes key to completing that dungeon and defeating the boss, eventually you'll finish enough dungeons to access the next part of the plot, etc etc). They're basically very simple action adventure that usually have a gimmick (Ocarina of Time gave you an item that allowed you to manipulate things about the world, Wind Waker gives you an item that controls the wind and a boat etc etc) and they basically all have the same plot. But they're great.

The new one seems to be a pretty big development towards more overtly ARPG gameplay. The older ones are far more simplistic.

[Chindie]

8 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

It somehow doesn't put out better performance at 1080? lulwat? Are you sure they weren't talking about the One S which has 4k video playback but not better hardware for games?

The One S does have better hardware for games, but only slightly, in fairness . But yeah I think Phil may have misspoken there. The console will offer benefits to non-4k owners, of course it will.

[PieFacE]

Quote

Still running a 1080p TV? Then you should forget about buying Xbox Scorpio.
That’s the message from Xbox boss Phil Spencer. He was asked by Eurogamer about the thinking behind announcing the new Xbox One S only to an hour later reveal a brand new machine, Xbox Scorpio.
“You should buy [the Xbox One S], because Scorpio is not going to do anything for you,” Spencer said after asking the reviewer what TV he had – in this instance a 1080p set. “Scorpio is designed as a 4K console, and if you don't have a 4K TV, the benefit we've designed for, you're not going to see."
“Clearly, you can buy Scorpio, and if and when you decide you want to buy a 4K television to take advantage of the increased performance, obviously the console will be ready for you. For us in the industry, it's easy to think that most power is always the thing that wins. If you look at last gen, what won? The Wii won. The Wii sold more than we did on Xbox 360 and the PS3, and it wasn't the most powerful console out there. Price is critically important. Wii was a good price and it had a great experience.
“Scorpio is for the person who's got a 4K television, who's really focused on 4K gaming. It's going to be a premium price over what we're selling this one for, and both of them will exist in the market at the same time. Scorpio is for your 4K gamer. And that's what we designed it for.”
It was speculated yesterday that while it seems Xbox Scorpio will have a quite significant power advantage over PS4 Neo, that advantage will come at a cost – that literally being the cost, which could be some $100 more than Sony’s new machine.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/spenc...-4k-tv/0168577

[Davkaus]

Wow. I'm absolutely amazed that they're not pushing Scorpio at people still running 1080p TVs as well, considering how poor the performance is of the the current consoles. If Scorpio is capable of pushing 4k (and I don't buy for a **** second they're pushing 4k at 60fps), they should be able to do 1080p at a solid 60FPS with far more bells and whistles turned on. It seems a shame to not make the most of that. 

[PieFacE]

Yeah its utterly bizarre how they aren't pushing this at people with 1080p TV's.

They should be pushing a message to people with 1080p & 4K TV's saying something along the lines of "play all your games in 1080p with Ultra graphics settings, or 4k in medium settings" or words to that effect.

Dismissing people with 1080p TVs as a potential userbase for the Scorpio is crazy. I appreciate they still want to sell the Xbox One S, but this message they are sending out is absurd.  

If Sony were remotely worried about how to market the Neo, MS has just shown them what not to do.... again.

Edited June 15, 2016 by PieFacE

[Chindie]

That article kinda reads to me like a really mangled marketing call. They need to sell Xbox Ones but they've announced a successor that's 18 months away. So marketing has decided to position the Xbox One as for 1080p players and Scorpio for 4k. Unfortunately that also means you get stuff like this come out when the reality is going to be, yes your not using the console to the full potential if you're only on 1080p but you'll still see a benefit. There's no way they'd using that much power, or bothering to create a console like this, if all it can do is either a) Xbox One standard graphics at 4k or b ) only outputs at 4k.

Phil's got muddied my marketing drives or Microsoft is manned by imbeciles. The reminds me a bit of the Xbox One announcement where they tried to position the 360 as the option for offline players and Xbox One as for networked players.

[PieFacE]

2 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Phil's got muddied my marketing drives or Microsoft is manned by imbeciles. The reminds me a bit of the Xbox One announcement where they tried to position the 360 as the option for offline players and Xbox One as for networked players.

I was about to post the exact same thing. They should have had set answers for the all the questions they've been getting about the Scorpio from the get-go. I get the impression they are kinda winging it as they go. There doesn't seem to be a unified clear message here of what the Scorpio is, or who it's aimed at. 

[Daweii]

Hmmm Scorpio better be on the affordable side of life then like £400-ish cause if not PC gaming is getting far more affordable. The AMD RX 480 is like £200 and it's forte is 1080p60. Want a bit more grunt? The RX 490 is rumoured to be about £280 and that is likely the GPU in the Scorpio. Microsoft need to realise that their console business is important, that just because every exclusive at E3 this year was on PC does not mean that you make your new console for a niche market.

If I was in marketing there I would be speaking the same as when Xbox 360 came out in the time where HDTV's were still uncommon. I would be saying things like "Xbox Scorpio is designed to take advantage of the latest in UHD technology, but it will still work and offer great advances in visuals, frame rate and gameplay even if you still own a 1080p display." That was the message Xbox 360 used albeit taking advantage of 720p and that it still worked on your 480p/i displays. Spencer coming out and being so adamant that Scorpio is basically just the same Xbox One just with enough grunt to play these same games at 4K is not impressive really. 

[PieFacE]

They are sending out a very dangerous message imo. How many people are there who have 4KTV's, and are desperate for a new console from Microsoft? The player pool they are currently trying to sell Scoripio to is tiny. 

Edited June 15, 2016 by PieFacE

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, PieFacE said:

I was about to post the exact same thing. They should have had set answers for the all the questions they've been getting about the Scorpio from the get-go. I get the impression they are kinda winging it as they go. There doesn't seem to be a unified clear message here of what the Scorpio is, or who it's aimed at. 

They're in a difficult position. They're trying to switch to an iterative generation process which is not something the console market is used to (I.e. yes there's a new console but your Xbox One isn't obsolete, the same way your year old iPhone isn't when the new one comes out), whilst also trying to position a new console and a revised model, and trying to soundbite it for the average idiot. They also don't want anyone who might by an Xbox One now, seeing the announcement and thinking they'll save their money for Scorpio. They also need to make a big deal of the Scorpio, make out what is headline capabilities are at the same time. And it's likely to be expensive so you need to excuse that...

So they've positioned it as a fudge of these needs for marketing and then Spencer has probably badly worded what they came up with. I expect they'll clarify things in coming months when the fallout from that comment requires it.

On the face of what he said, it makes very little sense.

[Davkaus]

13 minutes ago, Daweii said:

Hmmm Scorpio better be on the affordable side of life then like £400-ish cause if not PC gaming is getting far more affordable. The AMD RX 480 is like £200 and it's forte is 1080p60. Want a bit more grunt? The RX 490 is rumoured to be about £280 and that is likely the GPU in the Scorpio. Microsoft need to realise that their console business is important, that just because every exclusive at E3 this year was on PC does not mean that you make your new console for a niche market.

Now that they consider Xbox a platform, not a device, I doubt they're worried about losing people to PC gaming. They can sell their Xbox exlusives, and Microsoft will earn a lot more money from people buying them on their Windows 10 store.

Scorpio just needs to beat Sony's Neo offering, it's not in competition with PC, IMO.

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, The_Rev said:

I've still never played a Zelda game, and I think I've had a machine capable of playing video games since the mid 1980s. 

 

2 hours ago, PieFacE said:

Same, apart from swap 80's for 90's  

 

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

I've never played a Zelda, Pokemon or Mario game. I jumped from Sega consoles, to Sony, then to PC, I've never had a Nintendo device. Zelda in particular does seem like the kind of game I'd like...I'm a little tempted to take the plunge, but I wonder just how easy it is to jump in to such a huge series at this point.

You guys need to get on that.

Zelda is accessible in that there is usually very little connection between one game and the next. It's usually a self contained story. Absolutely no need to play all or any of the previous iterations. You could quite easily jump into The Twilight princess or Wind Waker and be at no disadvantage.

Try one for free. download a gameboy colour emulator on your phone ("MyOldBoy" is a good one) and download Link's Awakening. 

I'm playing through it at the moment as it's one of the few I've never played and it's wonderful.

 

Obviously if anyone is going to get involved with the Zelda series, then playing the Ocarina Of Time at some point is a must. Still the best game I've ever played, although it's undoubtedly not aged well, graphically.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Stevo985

[Chindie]

For an idea of how bad Microsoft seem to be at getting on message, Spencer was quoted elsewhere saying that developers are perfectly at liberty to use Scorpio's extra grunt to do what they like with it. But then that gets away from the 4k message and gets too close to saying the Xbox One is basically superseded.

Elsewhere, the guys behind Gears 4 are saying they've been able to use the extra power of the S to get better performance, whilst someone else is saying there is no performance boost in the S. But the official marketing boasts the S has HDR game capability, which the standard absolutely can't do.

Microsoft need to sack their marketing team. They're absolutely dreadful at developing a single cohesive message. And when they do occasionally manage it, they put their foot in it.

[PieFacE]

The message they delivered in the Scorpio video is completely different to the message they are delivering now.

In the video they were saying "Removing barriers... Innovation and the latest technology... delivering the world's most powerful console is something we absolutely want to do... the most powerful graphics processor that's been put into a game console... the highest res... the best frame-rate... no compromises... we can render at 60Hz... we can render fully uncompressed quality pixels... the best quality pixels... true 4K gaming.."

Now it's "ah don't bother buying one if you haven't got a 4KTV" 

You couldn't make it up. They could have really really pushed and hyped the Scorpio in the same vain as that video, but out of fear of losing sales of Xbox One (which i'm sure they would have made up by people buying Scorpio), they've killed all hype and just confused everyone. 

 

 

Oh... I see they've changed the line again

 

Quote

Game developers will be able to use Project Scorpio's 6 teraflops of GPU power in any way they wish, and won't be forced to hit a native 4K resolution, head of Xbox Phil Spencer suggested in a video posted earlier this week.

Speaking in the video (below), Spencer explained that Scorpio is a "6 teraflop gaming machine, which will be a great gaming machine for true 4K gaming, giving you a native 4K frame buffer so you can see games in all their beauty.

"Or," he continued, "if developers want to use those 6 teraflops in other ways they're free to do that."

Spencer's comments suggest that developers may be able to use Scorpio's additional power to deliver more visually impressive games at a lower resolution, rather than be forced to render at native 4K.

Source: http://www.videogamer.com/news/devel...s_spencer.html

Edited June 15, 2016 by PieFacE