Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@DarthNocturnal Combined with the energy saving option, and turning off the hard disc when switched off, it should prevent from downloading anything automatically, and that goes for ALL models Xbox One. I've linked to official pages in previous comments, so you could try that.

@ThanosReXXX Yeah I tend to underestimate how hard it is for people to acclimate to dual analogs. It's honestly a serious skill. I went keyb/mouse after D-pads and arcade sticks. When I got my console I was bad with it. I even bought one of those mouse adapters to play with a mouse on a console....it was sketchy but worked Though as for which one you spent most time with, I've actually spent most time with parallel sticks. I had the PS3 before the X360, and had a Logitech PC pad that was, of course, designed to ape the PS2. Still hate parallel So the X360 style controller I'd had the most briefly, but loved it most. I'm actually mostly one of those "symmetrical everything" people. But I don't sneer at ergonomics that work But here's the secret: It's the X360/X1 controller that is symmetrical for modern games. The PS4 controller is asymmetrical. It was designed that way because back when the DS format was designed the D-Pad was the primary input in their predominantly 2D games. One thumb lives on the top left for movement (D-Pad), the other thumb lives on the mirrored same position on the right (diamond OXAN). The XBox/Sega/Nintendo controllers simply recognized that 3D games, not 2D games were to be the main games on their machines, so the left thumb would be on the analog, not the D-Pad, most of the time, meaning they should be swapped to maintain FUNCTIONAL symmetry (at the expense of aesthetic symmetry.) The "offset" stick is actually the same symmetrical (functionally/ergonomically) layout that the Dual Shock (1) was meant to achieve, in the era of 3D games. It's just visually asymmetrical if you don't see a hand on it. With a hand on it, it's symmetrical. Left on the top stick, right on the top ABXY, most of the time.

Cool that you like Syndicate. Yeah it was something of a return to form even on its own, in an odd way (at least a return to 2, if not to 1.) I finally tried the new one as well. It's really good. It's a little Breath of the Assassin but I think it's more Assassin's Creed: MGSV Edition. It does a lot for AC what MGSV did for MGS. It feels much more like the original, finally, though still not quite. It's its own thing. The original was still tighter on very focused, elaborate assassinations but with free approach. This one still has the big hits as "strolling NPCs." But the world is excellent.

Downloads: That would stink if it were tied to auto updates. I want games and OS to auto update, I just don't want it to go on a 4TB downloading spree if I buy 5 games on a sale. I do have auto updates on. I'm using Instant-On mode (otherwise it won't suspend your game....a key feature of modern consoles to me, but I do have it power down the HDDs (works for internal and external). I think if you go to download, it spins up the drive(s) even while off, to download. PS4 does that too, if it's in sleep mode, and you buy a game online, it'll still WoL and spin up and download it at low speed without firing up the GPU. But it doesn't auto download.)

Controller connect auto power on is annoying. May not be able to help it though if Instant-On is on. But the download thing is annoying. It may actually be an MS Account setting rather than a console setting...but I can't find it there either.

@DarthNocturnal Like the official page on energy saving mode mentions, that depends on whether or not you have the hard disc turned off with the console as well, otherwise it stays in standby/sleep mode and will push any and all downloads, even when the console isn't switched on.

If the console is switched on and you purchase something, then it will typically start downloading straight away, but that doesn't seem all that strange to me. And even on the old Xbox One, you could only stop auto downloads in the case of the console not being switched on.

Would have been nice to have the option to choose "download now or in sleep mode" such as we had on the Wii U, but this is as close as we're going to get to that, on the Xbox One. Personally, I'm really not that bothered by it, to be honest.

I mostly buy my (free) games on the website, so they won't start downloading until I power up the console anyways, and if something is downloading in the background while playing another game shouldn't really be a bother to anyone either, unless you have a really crappy internet connection and you want to play online...

@NEStalgia So, if I understood you correctly, you use suspend to have some sort of instant save? I have done that, but most games have sufficient save points, so there's really no need, and switching instant-on to energy saving in combination with switching the hard drives off, does indeed prevent any auto-downloading, and certainly if the console is switched off.

As for the whole symmetric/a-symmetric debate: I wouldn't call offset sticks symmetric. The very definition of symmetry is it being the same on all sides, and the Xbox controller definitely isn't, where stick placement is concerned, so it sounds a bit odd to me to call that symmetric.

But scratch that: at least we agree on that being a much better controller than the DS...

As for AC Syndicate: yeah, the world is great. The whole Britain/industrial age vibe has been caught pretty decently, and it also has a bit of a steam punk flavor, so all in all, a pretty good game in my opinion. Haven't put any more hours in it since last weekend, so I have to wait and see how it holds up further along in the game, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it will.

@ThanosReXXX Oh, it makes sense if you buy games on the console for it to auto download. My problem is if I buy them on the website it also auto downloads. The X1, PS4, and Switch all CAN push the download to your console while sleeping if you buy online. The difference is PS4 and Switch default to NOT doing so, but present you a button to "start downloading to my primary console now" if you want to, otherwise it doesn't. X1 seems to force you to accept the download. And if you buy online and aren't home, you can't stop the download at all. I can't imagine they don't have a way to disable that, but darned if I can find it. Technically using power-save only slightly helps. It doesn't download while you're not there, but when you turn it on next you have to remember to go into the apps and clear the queue (but not clear pending patches since you weren't downloading them either.)

For huge games and limited drive space it's an annoying "feature." (And while I don't have a 4k TV, it can still use the 4k assets for super-sampling, so it still pays to download them.) Plus, I have "unlimited" bandwidth, but I still feel wrong hogging the line with terabytes of download I'm not actually using now and will probably delete and re-download at a later date!

I did notice that the X1X stays physically warm in "instant on" sleep. PS4 Pro does not. OG PS4 kept the fan running but they might have patched that out.

Symmetry: If you picture a HAND on the controller though you see what I mean. XBox controller your left hand and right hand (left stick, ABXY diamond) are in symmetry. With DS, your hands are forced asymmetrical (left stick at bottom, XOAN diamond at top.) The controller isn't the whole mechanism. The human using it creates the full mechanism, and completes the symmetry

@DarthNocturnal Yeah I doubt 1/S/X have very different settings aside from new features. I think "old X1" means "a few patches ago." I imagine they brought X1 up to date with the OS when S launched. But yeah at least I'm not the only one put out by the download thing.

Good example: Mordor: Shadow of War. Decent sale on now. Might buy it. But it's >100GB download. I don't actually want to download it now, I'm not playing it now. I just want to buy it on the sale, so I have to wait to do it until I'm sitting at the console to cancel. Meaning I'll probably forget to buy it at all.

@DarthNocturnal With 4k assets. To be fair that and Forza are the two most infamously huge games. I got the X because I found a great refurb price, and because I already had a PS4 Pro, so the whole point of the XBox was a more PC-like system without the expense of a PC

I don't have a 4k screen, but just like on the PS4 Pro, the supersampling AA can make a nice difference. Honestly with the Pro and the X I'd be happy if there wasn't a new console for 5 more years. I feel like without pushing into 4k there's really nothing I'd gain from one. X is really all I need power wise for many years. Even the PC versions of games only look "somewhat" better for now.

Edit: And the point of the PS4 Pro upgrade was a mix of better load times (very noticeable), steadier frame-rates (very noticeable) and better PSVR support (though sadly too few games so far utilize it.....and then I haven't touched the VR in a while since I moved furniture and can't site the camera well )

@DarthNocturnal No, the menus aren't all that different. Most options are the same, there added a few on the S and the X, and/or they renamed some.

But initially, there really was an option to uncheck automatic downloads, including games. I've now read several articles and forum topics about that, which mention this VERY specifically, so I guess even the original Xbox One received an update at some point that removed/renamed that option.

@NEStalgia That is exactly why I still buy my games in physical form. I'm obviously not going to say no to free digital games, but the ones I really want and have chosen myself, are all physical/retail. Installing from disc is faster than downloading and installing them, and besides that, if I ever have problems with my connection or I happen to not have an active Xbox Live subscription anymore, I can still install the games, and play those parts of them that aren't online dependent, which actually still counts for more games than you might suspect initially.

Anyway, like I said to @DarthNocturnal earlier, I'm not really that bothered by the whole "auto download if console is switched on" thing. As long as it doesn't interfere with anything else I'm doing at the time, and I have enough space left on my HDD, then I suppose there's worse things to be worried about.

@DarthNocturnal Halo 5 is also up there and by the time MCC is fixed I think that'll be around/over 100GB.

@DarthNocturnal Digital Foundry has done a bunch of videos on which games exactly benefit from the X and how much, and it is actually quite the list. And those 4K assets do make a BIG difference, so it's not just performance, but also visuals. Textures, shaders, viewing distance and what not. Some of these 4K assets amount up to around 15GB - 20GB per game, so you could imagine that it makes quite the difference if almost a fifth of the original game is added on top of that non-4K content.

On top of that, although it's not interesting to every Xbox One owner, it MASSIVELY improves the visuals and frame rates of any and all Xbox 360 and OG Xbox games that are backward compatible with it. With the OG Xbox titles, you can already see quite the improvement on the S, which I also have. The frame rate is bumped up to 60fps, and the resolution is upscaled 4 times.

For example: I installed Black, a rather arcadey first person shooter made by the guys behind the original Burnout games, and it looks and runs like a dream.

Ultimately, I'm of the same mind as you: I'll get the X once it's a bit cheaper than it is now, and when I have a certain amount of cash to spend, I usually like to get my money's worth, and the best deal last December was the One S/Forza Horizon 3 1TB bundle, which also came with Game Pass, and a free game of choice, out of a selection of four. I chose COD WW2. I believe the others were Halo 4, Destiny 2, and one other game I can't remember.

A friend bought me Destiny 2, and I wasn't too interested at the time in Halo and the other game apparently left even less of an impression on me, otherwise I would have probably still remembered which game it was...

@DarthNocturnal Yeah, I know PS4 Pro has an option to allow it to boost older games (E.G. if a game dropped framerate because the devs just let it pull however much performance it can, the Pro will give it access to the reserves even if it's not a Pro Enhanced game. Not sure if the 1X does that. I don't see a specific option for that but that could come down to the fact that turning that off sounds like something nobody would ever do (and it's off by default on PS4 Pro for some reason.....but I've given up making sense of Sony's settings defaults ages ago. Like Vita that defaults to "Keep WiFi Active in Low Power state", which sounds like "don't turn WiFi off when in low power state" and is in fact "always keep Wifi in low power, never full power.".......)

But yeah depending on what the industry does, I think I'm fine sitting on Pro/X/Switch until the "mid gen refresh" (a.k.a. consoles that work properly) happens NEXT gen. These are nice machines with huge libraries.....how much gfx are we really going to push? X is nice, but I haven't seen the S. I got it, banking on MS getting rid of generations so the X can be a bridge to next gen, too.

Heck, if they come out with an X2 in a year or two after the X came out they'll tick a lot of people off if it's not compatible.

@ThanosReXXX I've always been into physical first and foremost (still have my Detroit PS4 preorder on!), but with some of the sales and such with PSN+ and XBLG there's some great deals on older games to be had.....so I'm living that up while I can get it! No worries about being an XBLG subscriber, if you digitally bought them they're yours be it disc or digital, no sub required. But yeah I do think about if the connection goes out (can always get a big HDD for them and keep them local though.) Install speed isn't bad for me....was pulling 330MB/s on an AC:O patch yesterday That's why I bought the XBox to begin with....new fiber! So I'm kind of compartmentalizing. X1X is my "digital box", PS4 is my mix of free/cheap digital and mostly physical. Switch is nearly all physical with some exceptions. Mostly because I trust XBox will carry my digital purchases forward more than Sony/Ninty ) I don't like the digital ecosystem overall....but X1X specifically feels kind of "meant to be used that way." I wouldn't have bought one without the fiber. It feels like a machine designed for fiber users only. I can't even guess what PC gaming is like these days....

But yeah, I share your overall concerns, definitely. Physical with all the patches required these days lacks the appeal it once had on the PC twins. Switch....physical is right as it should alwyas be.

But yeah for auto download it's an HDD space and "being a glutton" thing. I've used 44% of my drive already. These 3 games would put me to 70%. Have a 2TB on the way....but I still could fill it twice over just in freebies over a year. Funny thing in the States. Comcast, the biggest ISP has a 1TB monthly cap. They'll slam you in up to $200/mo overage fees after 1TB. (or conveniently you can add $50/mo and not be capped....) With X1X plus 4k video that's like 4 games and a some daily news starts hitting you into overage territory. Thankfully I'm not on Comcast, but you never know when they'll stat slamming you. US internet is not built for "the digital age." X1X should have a big disclaimer on the box: "Do not purchase if you have Comcast."

@DarthNocturnal I believe that is true for Xbox 360 games, because they had more variable frame rate options, but the relatively small list of OG Xbox titles all received a 4x upscale in resolution and fixed frame rate improvement, and last I read, that was 60fps. A lot of OG Xbox games actually already ran in 60fps, so that might be why it wouldn't be so hard to also have them run like that on the Xbox One...

As for the improvement in current gen games: the biggest improvements are found in most of their own games, but more than enough are also found in third party games. Here's a complete overview, if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_One_X_enhanced_games

And although I'm not the biggest fan of Digital Foundry and/or Eurogamer, it is undeniable that they do know their tech stuff and they make very thorough videos on these improvements, so I can still appreciate and watch them. (and just to be clear: not saying that you are claiming the opposite, just mentioning it as a general side note)

In general, though, I suppose (and would definitely hope that) not many people will be staring at their TV or monitor through a magnifying glass, so who gives a hoot if a certain texture looks cleaner if you put it under a microscope. That a game overall looks cleaner and nicer, that DOES attract/impress me, so that would be something that I could appreciate.

@NEStalgia On the X, improving games is on by default. And indeed; why the heck would you want to turn that off, if you have the option to use it. PS4 Pro hasn't got a thing on the X...

As for digital and ownership: one important thing to remember, and to take note of, is that there is a disparity there in the part where it concerns the free (GwG) games:

Xbox 360 games ARE completely free and also playable offline, especially if you still have a 360 lying around, so once you've downloaded these, they are yours forever, but all freely downloadable Xbox One titles are ONLY free and available as long as you have an active subscription, and will never be completely yours until you actually buy them.

The tiny positive thing about it is that you CAN subsequently buy them at a discount, but outside of that, it's more of a "rent them until you can't/won't pay the rent anymore" kind of thing...

@ThanosReXXX I dunny, PS4 lets me buy games without forcing me to download them..... It also lets me see my download queue and status on the website....something I'm amazed XBox doesn't have. I actually expected XBox to be well ahead of the quirky interfaces PS sometimes has but I'm surprised to see a few areas where PS is ahead. I'm still for now liking my 1X over my PS4, but I have to admit, if I had a 1S where the hardware was equal, I may be favoring PS4. (Except the controller.)

Digital ownership: Yeah, for the free games, I know that depends on the XBLG membership for One games. Same as PS4 there. I only hope that the GwG games remain playable if your sub lapses and then you renew. I was referring specifically to actually purchased games. I do have a better feeling MS will let us keep them into next gen's hardware, and keep downloads up for this gen indefinitely, given their back compat focus, while I don't have a ton of faith in Sony allowing that, and next to none that Nintendo would.

But do you ever check out the Deals with Gold? (And + Sales for PSN)....some (usually older) games have some great deals. Always some good finds for $10-20 (or $30 for newer titles) in those weekly members-only sales. Sometimes you can get physical even cheaper, used. Sometimes not. I'm kind of at an all you can eat buffet right now with these sales, on both platforms, though I'm double dipping a few that I bought on PS but would rather have on X now that I own it. (Not sure what to do with ME:Andromeda. It has a Pro patch, no X patch, but the controller suits it more. Same for Deus Ex:MD. Pro patch, no X patch....but the controller (and my achievements from DE:HR and ME2 are on XBox... ME's a mess though with ME3 on WiiU and ME1 on PC. : )

@DarthNocturnal Ah yes, DF Retro. I really liked their Metroid Prime video.

@NEStalgia Except the controller AND the far superior media drive...
Talk about quirky or odd man out, but we already covered in another discussion that it is absolutely weird that Sony didn't have the superior drive. Especially considering the history with the whole HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray race...

As for deals with Gold: I do check them sometimes, but like I said: the games that I truly want to have, that I would choose myself and that I REALLY want to buy and own, I'll gladly take my discount loss on, over a far larger percentage of ownership by having it in my actual possession as a physical disc.

And besides the odd exception here or there (either special editions, arcade games or DLC), I almost never buy games when they're still relatively new, so I never pay premium price for them anyways.

As for the X not having a Pro patch: don't know what's in the patch, but seeing as the X improves ALL games by default in one way or the other, I can't imagine that there's going to be so much of a difference there, that the X version actually ends up being the lesser one.

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, I forgot the superior drive....no 4k BD content so I haven't paid attention to that so much, but yeah, Sony of all companies who build the Playstation empire on their media format access really dropped a huge ball on that one.

Yeah, I'm with you on the ownership one (I've been even more staunch on that than you ) But then....some of these games. Notice Ubisoft games no longer let you off the title screen without connecting to their servers? EA's doing that too. The whole game must be played signed into your account with them. They take the servers down, and the game won't run. So in cases like that a disc means little more than digital.....I'm not find of that in either scenario, but I'll at least take the cheapest option I can't see buying any Ubi or EA game at more than $30 in any format ever again as a result (Except on Switch....sigh.)

Yeah, I'm just now getting out of the premium pricing on new games outside Nintendo. It's nice!

X Pro patch, unlocking the 30fps, adding additional shaders/lighting, higher res textures, and 1080p rendering instead of 900p. Sadly no love for the X. Pro is definitely going to be the nicer looking one for Andromeda and Mankind Divided. (Some might question if it matters for the former... )

I got to switching my X1S on the other day, first time in months (barely used since purchase) as I've just got Forza 7 and wanted to compare it to my initial impressions of GTSport on my PS4.

Saw I was signed in automatically. Good. Insert the Forza disc. Get told I can't install the game until I'm signed in. But I'm signed in. So I sign out. Then I have trouble signing back in. Finally get signed in and start the install. And it was sssllloooooooowww.

So I turned it off to come back to it later. Came back later and it turns out it doesn't keep the download going in low power, and I can't seem to find an option to enable that in the settings.

Finally get the game installed and boot it, and just like Horizon 2, you're stuck in an unskippable intro. Fair enough. Eventually get into the first bit of driving (Dubai, Porsche). Get about half a lap in and for no apparent reason a message pops up saying 'Bye' and it's signing me out!

Sign back in. Have to sit through the whole unskippable intro again. Get about 1/4 lap in. Oh, I'm signing out again, am I?

3 ****ing times it signed me out during that unavoidable sequence before I was able to finish that first race.

Worst. Console. Experience. Ever.

I had been harboring inklings of maybe upgrading to the X1X. Not so much now.

@NEStalgia Ah, you know, by the time those servers go down, we'll be in the next gen, and they'll probably migrate the game to the new console and/or they renew the servers, provided the game is popular enough.

And even if they don't, I'll just mod my by then old Xbox One, so that I can play on hacked servers, or that I can patch it. Patches like that are already available for both the OG Xbox and the Xbox 360, so I expect nothing less than something similar also appearing for the Xbox One. I think there's even mod chips that prevent or fake the online check, so either way, I'll be good, and in a LOT better position than with just a digital copy of a game, which for all intents and purposes could be rendered completely useless or even remotely deleted...

@gcunit Wow, sounds like you've had quite a bit of bad luck. Never had any other problems with any of my Xboxes other than having a strict NAT and some multi-player connection issues (probably related to those NAT issues). Oh, and a RROD on my Xbox 360, but that was fixed within the space of two weeks and it has been working perfectly ever since.

Anyway, it's not a problem of the console, so it's either your provider or the settings. If you go there, check what's checked or unchecked under 'Power mode & startup' and in settings, also check what's activated under updates.

Here's the official help page for all those power settings and activations:
https://support.xbox.com/en-IE/xbox-one/console/learn-about-p...

And here's another link I posted earlier:
http://www.itprotoday.com/management-mobility/what-xbox-turn-...

And you might also want to check your network and NAT settings. Mine are "Open", but according to @NEStalgia, moderate should be enough for most. But even Microsoft's official help page says to try the Open setting if anything other than that still causes problems. Most routers should nowadays have those settings in there by default, or at the very least most of the ports, but if not, you could always try that out.

To open up the NAT, you must add port forwardings to your router/modem. Here's my list:

TCP 3074
UDP 3074
UDP 88
TCP 80
TCP 53
UDP 53
UDP 500
UDP 3544
UDP 4500

Oh, and the intro on Forza may not be skip-able, but being able to play the best console-exclusive motor sports game around at the moment seems like a decent trade-off, for having to "endure" a 20 or 30 second trailer...

Or maybe I just grew somewhat less impatient now that I'm a bit older...

@gcunit

P.S.

Forgot to mention, and you'll be happy to know that, aside from the intro movie, you can skip all of the other game videos that you come across in Forza 7. I just looked it up and found an interview with the art director of the game, and he specifically mentions it. Don't know why they excluded the intro sequence from that, maybe it's loading something in the background and they use the cut scene to mask that? Who knows...

Interview, in case you're interested:
https://www.gamecrate.com/hands-forza-motorsport-7-smooth-and...

@gcunit I mean......it can't be WORSE than GTSport, right?

Hmm, mine keeps downloads going in low power. Do you have it set to "energy saver" or "instant on"? Instant on is the normal standby like PS4 Rest and Switch Sleep (and WiiConnect24.) Energy saver means "really fully shut down everything but the power button." So of course it wouldn't download in energy saver. But in instant on/suspend it should (even if you tell it to turn off storage when off, it'll spin up the drive if there's a download pending.)

The disconnects from the server though....not sure if that's your console, the game, or your internet. I wonder if it has other problems. Do check your NAT type as Thanos said. Moderate is fine, Open is "more perfect than normal", Restricted is next to useless. In Settings->Network should be a "check NAT type" type feature.

@DarthNocturnal "basically creates a pseudo-always online DRM situation" Nothing pseudo about it. It IS always-online DRM. More and more games are doing it. Most Ubi things, EA things, now apparently MS first party things.... it's gross and it's wrong.

@ThanosRexx I do still blame MS for the current climate of online DRM and patch-riddled games. The MS-EA vision of gaming has been a shared one and they've created a big part of today's rights issues in gaming, unfortunately. I feel a little dirty re-joining MS for that reason....not that PS is innocent with their secret content licensing deals, but they've at least been more a champion of status quo gaming. I'm enjoying them as an underdog, but will likely detest them if they cease t be the underdog at any point.

I hadn't thought of breaking the online DRM locks through modding. Never really got into that realm myself. I suppose that's encouraging. I suppose downloading to a local hard drive makes it no worse than an optical disk in terms of availability (after all PC enthusiasts point that out all the time), but the remote delte would be an issue. OTOH, since you have to install from disk they could remote delete those installs too. Not if you mod, though I guess. sigh I don't have these problems with my 30 year old SMB/Duck Hunter car....

BTW, tried Vanquish briefly. Seems pretty cool. The graphics are a real sloppy jumble though, hard to make out details but it's a great arcade type game. I hadn't realized it was Platinum. I'd have been hyped had I known. OTOH I noticed the 1X makes X360 very oddly blurry. I can assume it's doing some FSAA, but ultimately it's turned my X360 into a PS3. EEWW! I liked the 360 over the PS3 for third party games for the more stable framerates and leaving the jaggies instead of smearing vaseline on the screen. Now 360 games have the PS3 'magic' over them!

Also controller update: I was tempted to get a new Elite now that I can get a 4-year warranty on it (and they apparently need them) but I'll still hang onto my (mostly) working one I got for half price. it works well enough if I set the right stick to "delay" sensitivity curve to the max, it keeps the deadzone out of the drift distance. Works for games like Assassin's Creed. A little less so for Vanquish. For Honor is fine unless you try to use the ballistae where they turn the sensitivity up to 12. Oddly BF1 has a built in wide deadzone default that the drift never affected anyway. That said, my favorite controller, wire or no, is becoming the Wolverine. It's light, the buttons are snappy, the grips are like they're molded to my hand, and the sticks, like the PS4 Raiju are VERY high resolution. Input delay is very noticibly less (on both controllers) running wired versus wireless, but that doesn't matter on most games. What is MS doing with their wireless protocol? Those high res sticks are hard to step away from on the Razer though. Ever go from a normal mouse to a really high DPI precision laser mouse? It's like that.

I'll see what E3 brings for an Elite 2.0 though. Rumor says adjustable tension sticks and swappable trigger tops with 3 hairlock settings. But built-in batteries. The question is: does it use the same $0.15 analog module and plastic bumper bridge that breaks on the current models.

@NEStalgia Must be your TV (edit: or your cable jumbles?), because on mine, Xbox 360 games definitely look cleaner and a bit better than on the original hardware, and I don't even have an X but an S, so no idea what's up with that.

But yeah, Vanquish is a great game, with equal amounts of arcade fun and action. I already enjoyed it back in the day, together with a friend. I still have the special demo of it installed on my Xbox 360...

As for Microsoft's DRM policy: that's just as much on the bigger publishers as on them. Without the publishers, Microsoft would have had no need for all those kinds of gimmicks and would probably not have used any either. After all: their previous two consoles were hardly DRM riddled, so blame EA and Ubisoft. Mostly EA, though...

As for downloading to a local hard drive being no worse than an optical disk in terms of availability: of course it is worse. There's less ownership, and where the discs often don't come with the later patches, the downloads are already either riddled with them, or have some kind of auto-programming in them to not work, or work hampered without them. If you can block those auto-updates, DRM restrictions and online checks with modding, then only the original, unchanged content that's on the disc will be installed on the hard drive, and the mod chip and its own, altered patches will take care of the rest.

And even if they could remotely tamper with that, you'd simply re-install it from the untainted disc, and stay offline. A lot of these games don't even need online, unless you want to do multiplayer, and that is also what the mod chip prevents the console from doing: needlessly going online, by faking that online check/verification process.

So, with a disc install, you'd never be bothered by software that's probably already tampered with, which is another thing to consider, because over the years, the version of a game that'll be available to (re-)download from their servers, will be the patched one that they will have far more control over than the one you have at home on a Blu-ray disc...

Works like that in Xbox 360 mod chips, so I'm pretty sure that even better functionality will be added to future Xbox One mod chips, especially as the the Xbox One is, for all intents and purposes, an x86 PC in a box.

And oh you, and your controller tragedies/shenanigans. Swappable triggers, f-ing up dead zones, high-res sticks? Seriously? (looks at bog standard One S controller and is STILL very happy to play with that)

P.S.

You forgot my third X. Can't be hardcore without that triple X, you know...