XBO - From ZERO to HERO

[binary solo]

d21lewis said:

binary solo said:

That list looks interesting from the perspective of Xbox fans for sure. But If that's the major high points I'm not sure how Xbox gets to hero status.

I wish people would stop calling it backwards compatibility. It isn't backwards compatibility. You can't put your disc in and just play. What MS is doing is basically porting 360 games to Xb one which seems like it will take a minimal amount of effort and making them available for download.

I did suggest something like this for PS Now way back when. If you put a PS3 disc into your PS4 and the game is available on PS Now then you could play the game streaming without having to pay. Seems like MS listened to my suggestion, sort of, and Sony didn't. It would be easy enough for Sony to implement this if they think it's worth it. Is it worth it to counter? This is a move to try to shore up the Xbox base as it is of no value to people who don't currently own a 360. It does certainly make trade in offers more attractive because you're losing less by trading up, so long as your favourite games you like to go back to are supported. One TV households typically don't like having more than one console connected, so it is a big draw card for current 360 homes. It's certainly important to shore up your current customer base before you go out trying to attract new customers, and that is where MS screwed up before the generations started.

It is the first time, I think, MS is ahead of the customer service curve.

What if you didn't have an Xbox 360 last gen and you want to play the games you missed?  Worked for TLoU:R and it helped me last gen when I bought several original Xbox games for the 360....

You buy the Xbox 360 version for $5 and use the b/c function? It worked for TLOU:R precicely because PS4 has no b/c. The whole remaster phenomenon arose out of no b/c. If Sony had retained b/c for PS3, even the emulation rather than hardware, I doubt we would have seen a single HD upgrade for PS2 games. We might still have seen PSP ports like Ghost of Sparta and Chains od Olympus, but we would not have seen GoW I & II or the R&C collection or the Jak collection.

I'm glad MS has done this as they see this area as something in which to compete, which means Sony is likely to have to respond with making PS Now a better value proposition with some sort of b/c like service. If there is still a future for traditional consoles MS has clearly got an advantage with unifying its OS, because it makes Xb one like a PC in that true b/c should effectively be built into the system, just like Windows on PC is b/c/ with games that were released on previous version of Windows. It is certainly possible for Sony to make sure there is intergeneration unification of OS to ensure true b/c (at least with PS4 games) is a feature of future consoles. But if Sony is going all in with streaming then b/c also becomes a non-issue provided streaming is an economically attractive proposition. Playing legacy games is an interesting battleground to contemplate