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potato_hamster on 02 March 2016
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TheMessiah said:
potato_hamster said:

Can V1A games play all games V1C games? No, maybe some but not all. That's an enormous problem. Maybe multiplayer can work, but if V1B users have a fundamental advantage because they're playing at 60 fps and V1A users are playing at 30 fps, then again, that's an enormous problem. That's why when you have competitive gaming competitions, everyone plays on spec PCs. They don't bring their own.

Also "running on" and "running acceptably" could be months and months and months of work. I worked on porting a PS3 game to the PS Vita before the Vita was released and the developer kits and tools weren't finalized. We had the game "running on" the vita within a couple months, running at less than 1 frame per second, but it was technically running. It took another 6 before we had the game at a level that was "playable" (about 20 fps), and another 2 before we had the game running at 28 fps. See optimization, and tweaks to account for things like different screen resolutions, control inputs, etc. all take time, and they all need to be done. Also there's a vast difference between porting a simple pacman clone and porting say, Halo 5 to work on a tablet.

The xbox 360 ran games in 2012 that PC was running at much much lower specs. As I said in my initial post. PS4 wont run any PS5 games when PS5 releases in 6 years. So it will not be unusual for Xbox version 2013 not to run games by 2020/2021. The same way Iphone 3g cannot run apps from IOS 7  or higher. But say Version 2 from 2016 will be fine for games till 2025. The choice becomes entirley the consumers instead of being stuck with hardware for 6-8 years which is weak by the 2nd year. Consoles are the only tech the exists well after its obselete.

As for online play. If version 2 is running 1080p 60 fps multiplayer, version 1 just drops to 720p 60 fps. By the time Version 3 is out the first version is 6 years old and will be close to not playing new games. Just like PS4 cant play PS5 games when it releases.

As for the video. They showed a simple game because clearly they had limited time. Epic already have showed the same with Unreal Engine 4. Fable LEgends and Sea Of thieves are using the 1 code method which is being called UWP. ( Universal Windows Platfrom ). And Sam Lake recently talked about how easy it was to get Quantum Break up and running on PC. So much so, PC version is releasing same time as Xbox One. And PC didnt start development till well into Xbox One development accoding to Remedy.

Stuck? That's a benefit of consoles. I don't ever have to worry if any game with "PS4" written as its platform will not work on my PS4. That is an enormous selling point you are taking away. It will lead to consumer confusion, frustration, and platform abandonment. If consumers want to upgrade hardware every few years to get better performance, there's already a platform that does that. It's called the PC. If that's what consumers want, they can just buy a PC. Why bother getting an over-priced, underpowered Xbox 1B when you can just get a PC for a little more, not pay for online, and play all the X1 exclusives anyways because they're all coming to PC. You are giving consumers less of a reason to buy an X1, not a bigger one.

As for online play, you're assuming that version 1 can run at 720p, 60 fps. That's a big assumption. Frame rate is only one aspect that could be a disadvantage. Resolution can also be a disadvantage, if the enhanced resolution , or better shaders, or better draw distance, or better collision detection, etc. make it easier to spot enemies then the player with the newer console has a competitive advantage. Theses are all things that have to be developed with the lowest common denominator in mind to ensure fairness. You're glossing over this when it is clearly a huge deal that must be considered. The gameplay needs to be exactly the same across both models in order for it to be fair. That means additional testing and development, and likely means an impeded online experience for the powerful consoles, as developers will just take the easy way out and develop for the lowest common denominator. We've seen it time and time again, because making video games is really hard and reallly expensive.

As for the video. I watched the whole thing. It's really wonderful how much easier it is to get xbox live features on PC games. That's pretty much all it really shows though, everything else has pretty much been par for the course on multi-platform engines for a while. While it may be easier to port games from X1 to PC than it was X360 to PC, it's still not a matter of a simple recompliation. It's not a simple matter of making a PC game and it "just working on X1". There is still serious work needs to be done to port games, work that many developers may be unable or unwilling to do. This means that the PC and X1 will continue to have separate libraries.