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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is this Phil Spencer's final test for Microsoft? Is his job on the line?

 

Could Phil Spencer's job be on the line?

Yes. 132 53.66%
 
No. 114 46.34%
 
Total:246
Mr Puggsly on 07 May 2017
thismeintiel said:
Mr Puggsly said:

I'm not entirely convinced the only money MS gets is from the Windows license. Either way, you're supporting MS like it or not.

I wouldn't expect a $199 PS4 anytime soon. I'm actually thinking when Pro and Scropio can achieve $249, they will stop making the OG hardware. Hence, midgen upgrades will phase out old specs.

I'm not entirely convinced Scorpio will be $499. We'll see at E3 I guess.

Console CPU aren't extremely powerful, but console games are often better optimized than PC games. I own a fairly capable gaming PC and the X1 does amazing things with little power. So Scorpio's power in the console realm is gonna be impressive.

Again, I'm curious to see what custom CPU in Scorpio is capable of. Its designed to be faster and more efficient. That should help when doing 60 fps. I'm curious to see that in practice.

Frankly, I'm not really even thinking about PS5 right now. All we can do is speculate given we don't know when its coming, the price/power it will aim for, etc. Your expectations might be a bit high if its coming in 2020 and aiming for $399. People argue Scropio has to be $499 right now with dated specs.

Well, they can enjoy my $50 over the next 3+ years before I get another laptop.

The PS4 will be $199 this year, at least during Black Friday and, most likely, some other period during the holidays.  Sony is continuing with gens.  And regardless of what MS says, I imagine they will, too.  This means that the Pro may stay on the market slightly longer than the OG PS4, but PS4 games will still be made with the OG PS4 in mind. 

I'm sure the CPU will be more capable than the Pro, but I imagine that is more to do with the overclocking than any radical change to the Jaguar cores.  There's a reason MS is pushing the clock so high.  And it's not because they customized the cores to get much more power per Hz than the Pro.  Just don't expect a 30FPS-40FPS game on the Pro to run at 60FPS on the Scorpio.  Probably be more like 45FPS.  Games that are closer to 60FPS,  like 50FPS-55FPS, on the Pro will probably hit it on the Scorpio, though.  At least more consistently.

As for price, that is what DF is proposing as the price.  Considering MS went to them to reveal the console, it sounds like they may have hinted at the price.  Probably had them "speculate" it to get the idea of it being $499 out there.  See how it sits with gamers.  We may see them try to hit $449, saying, "See, it's not as much as you thought it would be."  However, given they have said a few times it is a premium console for a premium price, it definitely doesn't seem like they are aiming at $399.

I expect the PS5 in 2019, 6 years after the PS4 launched.  As for specs, they are actually in line with making a $399 console.  The Ryzen 1700 is already out and is a much better CPU than the Jaguar.  It goes for $325 right now.  By the end of 2019, it will be at least 50% cheaper, most likely a little more.  So, ~$150 at retail.  That means Sony could probably buy them in bulk for ~$100.  At maximum, the Vega 10 is going to launch for $500 this year.  By 2019, it'll be $250, so Sony can get them for ~$200.  That brings us to just $300.  That's still ~$100 to play with RAM, motherboard, cooling, and casing.  Of course, given that the RX480 was only $200 at launch, I could see the Vega being cheaper, like $300-$400.  And keep in mind, Sony is fine with taking a loss on HW, initially.  So, they may just decide to go with a Vega 20 to make sure they have enough power to be ~2.5x the Scorpio, and not just 2x.  Either way, prices are going to fall relatively quick, which will allow them to be profitable on HW within a year or so.

Well I think Windows 10 has other ways of generating money by you simply using it. But whatever, you're in their ecosystem.

Okay, we'll see if PS4 is $199 this year. Its certainly possible because anything is possible. But is Sony really feeling the pressure to make PS4 $199? I doubt it. Maybe it will become $249 officially this year.

Again, we'll have to see the Scorpio in practice. On paper though it looks promising. But I think people ignore these consoles CPUs are actually pretty good thanks to optimization, that same CPU couldn't achieve the same performance on PC.

I think $399 is possible for Scorpio without a significant loss per unit sold. But we'll see, i wouldn't be surprised if its $499 either. I feel they may be hyping the power without announcing price to surprise people.

I think MS and Sony are both okay with taking a small hit on consoles sold, atleast early on. That's why I'm doubting Scorpio will be $499, unless its a premium 2TB model with a game. Kinda like how X1S launched at $399 to take advantage of holiday demand.

Again, I don't even wanna get into PS5 because its all speculation. I just doubt Sony wants to take a big loss on hardware, those days are over.



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Pemalite on 07 May 2017
Mr Puggsly said:

Scorpio made a big upgrade on GPU so it will likely acheive 4K with greater ease.

If not. It can use fake-4k. Aka. Checkerboard.

Mr Puggsly said:

I'm not entirely convinced the only money MS gets is from the Windows license. Either way, you're supporting MS like it or not.

That's because Microsoft does make money outside of Windows licensing.

thismeintiel said:

You mean the general Xbox fan who used to love the 360 vs PS3 comparisons?  Where lack of grass in Mafia 2 was mocked?  The ones who mostly left or stayed quiet because they couldn't stand being on the other side of the argument?  Funny how I haven't seen any PS fans leave because of the Scorpio approaching.  Probably because we feel the same way as before.  Power is great, but means nothing without something to push it or an appealing price/identity. 

And thanks for "permission" to have the last word.  Of course, that doesn't really matter to me.  But, I will say this disscussion is over, even if you feel the need to respond.  Have a nice day. 

At the start of this generation it was pretty obvious that GDDR5 memory and the 50% more power was being rubbed in the faces of Xbox gamers.

During the Xbox Generation, Xbox gamers flaunted their technical superiority. (Pixel Shaders brings all the boys to the yard.)
In the Playstation 3 era, Playstation gamers flaunted their technical superiority. (Power of the Cell baby.)
This generation, Playstation gamers have Flaunted their technical superiority with the Playstation 4 (GDDR5z and 50% more powah.) and Playstation 4 Pro (Checkerboard).

Now Scorpio is superior verses the Playstation. That's life. I'm sure it will change around again in the future.
On the bright side... At-least the average joe is being educated about all the small PC terminology used for hardware like GDDR5 that they normally wouldn't know about.

In the end though. It doesn't matter. PC is clearly always going to be technically superior.


thismeintiel said:

I'm sure the CPU will be more capable than the Pro, but I imagine that is more to do with the overclocking than any radical change to the Jaguar cores.  There's a reason MS is pushing the clock so high.  And it's not because they customized the cores to get much more power per Hz than the Pro.  Just don't expect a 30FPS-40FPS game on the Pro to run at 60FPS on the Scorpio.  Probably be more like 45FPS.  Games that are closer to 60FPS,  like 50FPS-55FPS, on the Pro will probably hit it on the Scorpio, though.  At least more consistently.

I don't think you understand how insignificant a couple hundred megahertz is to CPU performance.
Jaguar is always going to be garbage, it's low-end, cheap, cost effective, energy efficient CPU architecture.
It was crap in 2013, it is crap today.
It's a common theme on console, they rarely take CPU performance seriously.

So instead of overhauling the crappy CPU core architecture to make it more capable which would have cost time, money, probably blown out Transister and TDP costs... You simply remove jobs that need to be done on it entirely, which is the entire point of moving a chunk of processing to the command processor.
That free's up a heap of limited CPU cycles to do other things.

That is where the bulk of the CPU gains will come from. The CPU cores themselves aren't dramatically overhauled.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Mr Puggsly on 07 May 2017
Pemalite said:
Mr Puggsly said:

Scorpio made a big upgrade on GPU so it will likely acheive 4K with greater ease.

If not. It can use fake-4k. Aka. Checkerboard.

Mr Puggsly said:

I'm not entirely convinced the only money MS gets is from the Windows license. Either way, you're supporting MS like it or not.

That's because Microsoft does make money outside of Windows licensing.

Well I never implied everything will be 4K. Much of the library may not be 4K, but it will happen more often than PS4 Pro. Frankly, I don't think 9th gen console will always hit 4K either. Not with greatly improved graphics.

Right, I'm sure they're using similar methods as Android and Apple. Frankly, I can't blame MS given their OS is so heavily pirated as well.



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S.T.A.G.E. on 08 May 2017
LudicrousSpeed said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:

Outside of the top three what are Xbox games really? There's no identity. Nintnedo and Sony fans can tell you what the mission statement of their company of choice is and they continue to deliver because they both have successsful formulas while striving to find new ones. As someone on a podcast said, "it can't be the games"... it has to be the system features.Those are the true exclusives they look for. That said, yes Microsoft does make a great interface.

Ori alone is better than any exclusive I have played on PS4. Just my opinion, you're welcome to disagree. Either way, not going to bother with list warz. You've made countless threads and posts about how crappy you think Microsoft is in this area, no point in trying to change your mind.

Ori is great, but yes...we're definitely going to have to agree to disagree there. One game is better than the entire catalogue of new IP's that sony has put out or is about to bring? I dunno, bro. I mean, more power to you. I play all platforms, but its just evident to me and even Phil Spencer this point that Sony and Nintendo are better than them at single player driven games. Microsoft needs to have an answer for Breath of the Wild and Horizon because Sony and Nintendo are on another planet now. This E3 is going to be very important for them. Hopefully they found another unknown title from a third party like they did with Gears that they can use, because I dont think Crackdown will save them. Im sure we will all enjoy crackdown though.



LudicrousSpeed on 08 May 2017

I said better than any PS4 exclusive I have played, nothing about new IPs they have brought out or will bring in the future. They could announce the greatest game ever at E3, we don't know. I don't think it's that far fetched to say Ori exceeds those games when both exclusive lineups have been so weak. How many here would take Uncharted 4 or Horizon over the entire Xbone exclusive lineup? I'd guess many. I'm not even going that far. Just saying against any PS4 exclusive I've played which is virtually all minus the Japanese stuff, id take Ori. Yes, we all know you think Microsoft needs to showcase 7 new internally developed IPs at E3 all of which will rival Zelda and Mario otherwise they're trash and why bother, you've posted it in 100 threads, no need to steer every single discussion that way.



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3sexty on 08 May 2017
Turkish said:

Phil Spencer has been a big disappointment to me: he cancelled games I was looking forward to, 1st party didn't get better, exclusives dried up, games from E3 2014 conference were either cancelled(Scalebound) or still not out(Crackdown 3). First party basically turned into firms that put out the same franchise over and over.

This is the final E3 I'm willing to trust him, if next month there are no new IPs shown then they will never come. I'm also tired of him giving the generic praise to the competition, and then he says Zeruda and Horizon lack impact and games as a service is the new thing.

VideoGameAccountant said:

First, RolStoppable's post is top notch. 10/10.

If you want to know what Microsoft will do, ask yourself, "Who is Microsoft's biggest threat." The answer is Apple.

Microsoft does not sell to customers but to other businesses. Microsoft would go to Dell and say "Hey, don't worry about that pesky operating system. We got it covered." So Microsoft would sell Windows to Dell to be used on their computers. This is why Windows sucked so much. It was for the benefit of the business, not the customer. As an aside, this is why Microsoft has struggled in every consumer business it has tried. Sony has done well because they are a consumer electronics company.

Now, Sony isn't a threat to Microsoft. There is no reason to fight for the living room and Sony as a company has been gutted to the point to where they are basically a video game company. But Apple is a threat. With mobile computing, there isn't a need to sell an OS. The OS is a part of the device. Everyone using smart phones and tablets is a huge blow to Microsoft. So everything in the company is going to be used to defend windows,

If you want another example of this, look at Zune. Microsoft pushed Zune as their media player until Apple ended the iPod. Then no more Zune. Remember the gap from Windows Vista to Windows 7. It seemed like forever. The Microsoft kept making OS back to back. Microsoft has been tuning Windows to be more smartphone friendly.

XBox's future will be to defend Windows. I expect that future XBox machines will be Window machines. Scorpio could be a start of this with its emphasis on power (first thing they unveiled about it). Anything Microsoft will do is to defend Windows. For instance, the OP mentioned, "Why would Phil release XBox games on PC." Because this draw people to Windows. The future of XBox is Windows because Windows is under assault from smartphones.

Playstation isn't even Sony's biggest business, Sony is making more profit now since over a decade, Kaz turned the company around.

Xbox' biggest threat is Playstation, don't kid yourself, Xbox is in the living room. Xbox isn't competing with Apple TV or iPhone. Microsoft lost to Apple and Google in the mobile space, they're losing to Sony in the living room. MS is big in the cloud and corporate business but they have other competitors there.

I agree about Xbox machines being Windows machines in the future, but nothing's gonna stop the decline of the PC market. Xbox games on PC doesn't draw in new people, PC gaming is already big. Windows Store isn't doing too hot compared to Steam, MS has good intentions but they ruin it with things like UWP.

Umm, actually pc is shwoing some real signs of turning around especially in the last quarter. And particularly so 2 in 1s and convertables are showing real signs of growth and these run windows. The mobile will never replace the pc (or the new forms of pc mentioned above.) In case you didnt know tablets running android and ipads are starting to show signs of decline in recent months at the expence of windows convertables and 2 in 1s. Just for good measure also, windows 10 is the fastest adopted windows O/S from what I have read recently..Android on mobile well that is a different story - that will keep growing but is really not a competitor to pc and never will be IMO. More a companionI'd say rather then direct competition.



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Pemalite on 08 May 2017
3sexty said:
Turkish said:

I agree about Xbox machines being Windows machines in the future, but nothing's gonna stop the decline of the PC market. Xbox games on PC doesn't draw in new people, PC gaming is already big. Windows Store isn't doing too hot compared to Steam, MS has good intentions but they ruin it with things like UWP.

Umm, actually pc is shwoing some real signs of turning around especially in the last quarter. And particularly so 2 in 1s and convertables are showing real signs of growth and these run windows. The mobile will never replace the pc (or the new forms of pc mentioned above.) In case you didnt know tablets running android and ipads are starting to show signs of decline in recent months at the expence of windows convertables and 2 in 1s. Just for good measure also, windows 10 is the fastest adopted windows O/S from what I have read recently..Android on mobile well that is a different story - that will keep growing but is really not a competitor to pc and never will be IMO. More a companionI'd say rather then direct competition.

PC Gaming was never in decline though. It was growing rather impressively even whilst the PC market contracted.

The PC gaming market is now larger than the console market in terms of revenues... And even companies like EA and Activision are seeing the PC be their most profitable segments on the occasional quarterly financial reports.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Chazore on 08 May 2017
Pemalite said:

PC Gaming was never in decline though. It was growing rather impressively even whilst the PC market contracted.

The PC gaming market is now larger than the console market in terms of revenues... And even companies like EA and Activision are seeing the PC be their most profitable segments on the occasional quarterly financial reports.

I'll never understand those people that were never into that market, yet claim it's on the decline, as if they've known about it their whole lives. Data as you mention would be spot on, it's making them more money as time goes on. 



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