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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Kotaku's Jason Schreier: 3rd Party Devs Frustrated By Lack Of Info On Scarlett

Recently, Tom Warren of The Verge stated that the reason that not many Scarlett devkits are out there is because MS is far from finalizing the Scarlett HW, namely because they want to surprise Sony with more powerful specs than the PS5.  Jason Schreier of Kotaku seems to think differently. 

“Not sure if the "trying to surprise Sony" part is quite right — common sense would suggest that, like with the Xbox One, Microsoft is just running behind schedule and will launch pretty hot — but I've talked to a few third-party developers who said they were frustrated by the lack of info on Scarlett, especially compared to Prospero.” - JS

Jason seems to be under the impression that MS is running behind, but will launch the console regardless and earlier than it should be, or launching "hot."  It also seems that there are 3rd party devs out there that are frustrated that they know little about the Scarlett's final specs, when they have games that could/should be launching on the console in less than a year.

The real question is what is MS doing?  Are they going to wait til Sony announces the PS5 fully, then announce a slightly more powerful console, giving devs very little time to get games ready for launch?  Or are they really just running late on getting the final HW together?  Either way, this seems like a poor decision/plan by MS, considering they need to be on their AAA game if they don't want to lose even more market share to Sony, that they gained with the 360.  Maybe MS really isn't all that worried about the HW side of the biz and are much more concerned about getting xCloud up and running.

Thoughts?  Oh, and sorry if this was already posted. Didn't see it on here.



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If they were actually committed to battle Sony on equal footing, equal footing being incredibly more powerful to make up for the lack of everything else, then they would just come out guns blazing. So far nothing is pointing towards MS actually wanting to put up a fight. They seem to be very much content to just trod along, just like the current gen. But I guess pretending to want to gain market share doesn't cost them anything.



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vivster said:
If they were actually committed to battle Sony on equal footing, equal footing being incredibly more powerful to make up for the lack of everything else, then they would just come out guns blazing. So far nothing is pointing towards MS actually wanting to put up a fight. They seem to be very much content to just trod along, just like the current gen. But I guess pretending to want to gain market share doesn't cost them anything.

Agreed. To me it just seems Tom Warren was doing damage control. In the end, I still believe that they will be incredibly similar devices. If either of them have an edge, it will most likely be by 10%-15%. I guess enough to mention, but not enough to truly make a big enough difference visually that anyone would truly care.



if they wanted to blow the PS5 out of water, wouldn't they surely just go for the best chip set available for cpu and gpu and ram etc? Then heavily take a loss on it to keep it at a reasonable cost to consumers.

Based on that they probably weren't thinking of launching next year or at least were not committed and will likely rush now.



 

 

twintail said:
Why the need for a 2nd thread?

MS are obviously just running behind schedule.

And anyone who thinks that MS are playing some waiting game has no idea how impossible that would be if they are launching next year. Deals, licenses and production cant just be finalised at the last second.

Different info and source.  Plus it's much more credible since he has connections with 3rd party devs.

But, yea, there is no way they can throw in some extra sauce in the 11th hour.  Unless they are going to release it without really testing it or they delay the launch, either on being a very bad move.  The best MS could do is to up the clock on the CPU and/or GPU, like they did with the XBO. 

The crazy thing is I can't believe MS let this happen, again.  This is like the 3rd time in a row.  360 obviously should have been delayed to work out the RROD issue.  They are lucky Sony couldn't launch in 2005, like they had originally intended to.  It's obvious that the XBO was released "hot," mainly to do with them having to reverse a lot of their DRM policies, but also one of the biggest new feature this gen, sharing, it was made obvious that MS hadn't even thought to put that in until the PS4 reveal.  Now, we are 11 months away from Scarlett's launch and it seems quite a few devs don't even have the first round of devkits.



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I'm just wondering if they are having problems choosing their priorities: their home consoles or their new cloud-based platforms. No matter how it's spun, they eat into each other's markets and in house resources.



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Cobretti2 said:
if they wanted to blow the PS5 out of water, wouldn't they surely just go for the best chip set available for cpu and gpu and ram etc? Then heavily take a loss on it to keep it at a reasonable cost to consumers.

Based on that they probably weren't thinking of launching next year or at least were not committed and will likely rush now.

I think they intended to launch next year.  Part of me thinks that they were originally going to go the two SKU route (Lockheart and high-end Anaconda), but realized that might make things confusing for the average consumer, so ditched that plan.  It seems to be the case as there was no mention of two SKUs, just the one Scarlett. 

Maybe they had a model that would be $299-$349 that would be weaker and only do 1080p gaming.  Then, they had a really beefed up SKU that may have been more powerful than the PS5, but they realized that they would have to launch it at $549-$599.  Then they realized if Sony does launch at $399-$449, with specs somewhere in between, though closer to the Anaconda, they would be dead in the water.  So, maybe they had to scramble to get out something closer to the PS5 for $499.

Just a theory.



Marth said:
Darwinianevolution said:
I'm just wondering if they are having problems choosing their priorities: their home consoles or their new cloud-based platforms. No matter how it's spun, they eat into each other's markets and in house resources.

Well we would need a report about their 1st party studios as well.

It could be that they want to strenghten their own studios as much as possible by giving them the dev kits much sooner.

True, but their adquisitions have been relatively recent, so they might not have anything major ready for launch. It seems like Scarlett is in a rather awful situation right now: if it releases early, it won't have the software needed to push back against PS5 and the PS4's momentum. If it releases later, the PS5 will probably have a decent inertia that will be difficult to stop. And in both cases they have to supply both the Scarlett and the X-Cloud the resources needed to function, with the potential of also splitting up the userbase.



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.

thismeintiel said:

Thoughts?  Oh, and sorry if this was already posted. Didn't see it on here.

When all the pictures of PS5 dev kits where out, and the amount..... seems to point to Sony haveing a multiple month lead, with kits out.

If your launching a game 11 months from now with a new console, haveing had a extra 4-6 months with a dev kit, can make a big differnce in how well optimised those games are at launch. Xbox Might have more powerfull hardware as a result? of this wait and see, what sony are planning type deal, but will likely not be something that shows in the first few batches of games. Also theres a downside to aiming for the performance crown, usually that comes at higher unit production costs.



thismeintiel said:
vivster said:
If they were actually committed to battle Sony on equal footing, equal footing being incredibly more powerful to make up for the lack of everything else, then they would just come out guns blazing. So far nothing is pointing towards MS actually wanting to put up a fight. They seem to be very much content to just trod along, just like the current gen. But I guess pretending to want to gain market share doesn't cost them anything.

Agreed. To me it just seems Tom Warren was doing damage control. In the end, I still believe that they will be incredibly similar devices. If either of them have an edge, it will most likely be by 10%-15%. I guess enough to mention, but not enough to truly make a big enough difference visually that anyone would truly care.

^ that.

Also as a result of delayed dev kits, you might see less games early comeing to xbox.
(ei. a few more PS5 indies, or double AA's)

The xbox One launch was hot too, they had to rethink alot of their policies, and change alot of software for the system and how it handles games.
(when they removed the disk = 1 license install only, always online ect ect stuff)

This could also mean you risk running into a launch like the xbox one, with the TV,TV,TV,SPorts,TV,Halo,TV.. ect
(without that many new games to show case for it).