Topic: The everything Xbox thread

Unless it's an error, I think Target is about to release another pre-order stock of the Series X. The Pre Order Now button is active, but when I clicked on it it gave me an error message that the item couldn't be added to the cart.
https://www.target.com/p/xbox-series-x-console/-/A-80790841?c...

I'm wondering why we haven't heard more about which current-gen games will get enhanced patches on launch of the Series S/X. I would think quite a lot of games would be doing it. Something as simple as just a higher resolution output would take them hardly any time to offer as a patch.

But so far we've heard very little. Forza Horizon 4 and Gears 5 are some of the only ones they've confirmed for launch. They haven't even said anything about Halo MCC I don't think.

@Dezzy About MCC, I'd guess Halo 4 comes to PC on November 10th and that update includes Series X/S enhancements. In general though I think Microsoft will have an event in October as there's still quite a few unknowns about Series X/S such as:

• What's coming after Gears Tactics (nothing has a release date after it)?
• Flight Sim console release hasn't been mentioned since X019
• We haven't seen Infinite's multiplayer
• Enhancements for XB1 games
• Is the backwards compatibility program for OG Xbox/360 games getting new additions?
• Series X gameplay (we've seen Series S gameplay with Dirt 5 and Gears 5 but not Series X)

I also think there'll be another PS5 event as there's plenty of unknowns regarding that console too.

I thought we saw gears running on Series x

@Grumblevolcano

Yeah you'd think so. If nothing else, they really should just give us a short Halo Infinite trailer using ray tracing, so it actually looks like the Series X has some benefits.
Doesn't even have to be that much. Just literally give us the same trailer we've already seen, but add ray tracing and do a before/after to show how much the graphics will improve.

@NEStalgia I wish! I really wanted one. But never saw them on sale.

I just noticed something as a listed feature I didn't see before. Quick resume for multiple games. So if you're playing a few games at once, you can quick resume several of them where you were without having to start through the menu screens as though it was just running the whole time. WHOA - I might need to buy one of those expansion drives early after all! That's "beyond Switch" level convenience options for the chronically impatient! I compulsively mash A non-stop while waiting for load screens....

@Dezzy
"All Xbox One games are playable on the Xbox Series X, but developers can roll out enhancement patches to upgrade current-gen games with next-gen performance."

I'm sorry...what's an enhancement patch....don't they mean $30 remasters?

I'm guessing not many games need a patch at all unless they're doing new things like adding a 120fps mode, ray tracing, or the like. I think most of their PC-focused design has unlocked framerates, and dynamic resolution already, and most of these games already have 4k mode and 4k textures for X1X. And "XBox One X Enhanced" probably quietly meant "XBox Series X Enhanced." I think most games will just run full throttle out of the box, and only need a patch if they're adding specific new features like SoT, Horizon 4 and Ori 2 are doing.

No, it's on PS they're $30 remasters, @NEStalgia .... On Series X, they'll be mostly free upgrades, which will probably be optional

@Grumblevolcano There's a few unknowns about XBox Series. There aren't many knowns about PS5. We know it's equipped with Cernydrive technology. We know somewhere, somehow, there's an m2 slot to plug an HDD into. Probably. We know how many ports it has now. And we know it's a fugly big mutha. We know it has a credit card slot on one model, and must have NFC payments on the other, because you probably have to insert a quarter every time you turn it on.

But Sony won't have another presentation. They told you everything they want you to know and drop the rest of the bad news on Twitter on a Saturday night. Just buy the plastic and await greatness ($0.24/minute additional long distance charges apply.) If we're lucky well get a blog about Jim Ryan's private gardner, and Mark Cerny will tell us how electrons flow through different base metals.

XBox probably won't have a presentation until November. I imagine they'll have something to fill the XO20 slot even if it's not XO20 to build that holiday hype and advertise Game Pass right after launch and into the holiday buying season.

@Eel That's because they were dumping them out back before they displayed them. I'm not mocking. I own Vita. And Virtual Boy. Sometimes I like to take a stack of money out of my wallet and light on fire. It makes me giggle.

@BruceCM But but, Push Square told me that entitled gamers don't deserve free updates. these updates take a lot of work and you should be happy to pay for them! You can't remaster games that you launched last month for free you know! It's not a patch, it's a remaster! These 4k textures are so much more vivid than the 4k textures you got in 2018! You didn't buy new hardware to improve your games, you bought new hardware to buy better versions of those games!

If you bought a game on XBox one you still get to play your game on XBox S|X, it doesn't automatically entitle you to getting the XBox S|X version of the game for free! How dare you! Games have versions and each video card upgrade needs a new version of the game darnit! I live in 1999 and what is scalability?

Which is funny, because MS is basically building tech to automate "remastering" your old 360 games inside the machine at no development cost at all.....funny how forward thinking works.

And my favorite "I'd buy game x on PS5, PS7, PS8 and PS10, I love it so much!"

You know the tide is turning when Sammy Barker is complaining about Sony's pricing and how it's out of step with the industry and his Faithful are shouting him down as being anti-Sony. I actually feel like defending the guy. Though I've noticed most of the most obnoxious people over there only joined in the past 6-12 months.

@NEStalgia I think if the pandemic wasn't around X020 would've existed (and been on the evening before Series X/S launch) but I think instead of a digital X020, Microsoft will just give all the theoretical X020 announcements to Geoff Keighley for the Game Awards.

I wouldn't have expected most of the upgrades to be free, @NEStalgia .... But MS decided to do that for all their 1st party stuff & most others seem to be doing the same, for now, at least Remember I'm PC, so I'm least affected by console stuff, though

@NEStalgia

I fear that dynamic resolution is probably often coded as "anything up to 900p" or "anything up to 1080p" on Xbox One, meaning it won't automatically adapt to 1440p or 4K.

I'd like some 60fps patches for quite a lot of games too!

I'm sure excited for the Witcher 3 patch they're working on, but I think they said it won't be until 2021.

@Grumblevolcano "Microsoft will just give all the theoretical X020 announcements to Geoff Keighley"

Wow, and @BruceCM thought I was cynical....

@BruceCM Well, MS is just bringing console in line with PC. Which is expected, and what the industry would be doing anyway. Only Sony is trying to hold onto PS1 like we still run games from CDs and replace them every gen.

@Dezzy I think anything without an X1X patch is, yes. But I think that most of the library, or most of the library that matters was updated for X1X, which means "anything up to 4k." That's probably the main purpose of X1X.....preparing for Series X. EA even updated Andromeda. Quietly, and late, but it was updated. The lone exception of anything I've tried other than some really early stuff is Deus Ex: MD which really suffers on XBox still....it's really ugly and looks much better on PS, unfortunately.

Even Cyberpunks SeX patch won't be available until 2021 IIRC.

@NEStalgia Well Series X and Hellblade 2 were officially revealed at the Game Awards 2019 (alongside trailers for Gears Tactics and Ori 2), the biggest announcement of the July Xbox event was in a Geoff Keighley hosted pre-show (Dragon Quest XI S), etc.

@Grumblevolcano They only put a fine point on Series X at TGA, it was mostly announced prior at E3, just not by name. I mean they usually leave something for TGA but not big roadmap post launch kind of stuff. And I don't think a lame Switch port from S-E counts as "big news" though it's awesome XB gets DQ finally.) I think the twitter/youtube verse has a different idea of news than big events.

I agree with above though, XO20 was cancelled only due to the pandemic, but I'm sure they will have promotional pieces during that same timeframe because it's a key timeframe, and right before Black Friday is a key time for them to create buzz. This year the normal XO20 timeframe puts it the one week between launch and Black Friday. They can't ignore that time.

Well, I'm certainly noticing the advantage of even a cheap SSD on my PC, over the HDD for XB1s, @NEStalgia.... So, I'm sure the ones they're using are quite a bit faster and perhaps when you see that, it'll persuade you

@BruceCM Oh, the SSDs will be much faster. I mean their sales model of "PS1 games are different from PS2 games are different from PS3 games and you keep rebuying the game again to play the "new" version."

That ship sailed. XBox works like PC. Everyone thought PS would too, but they're trying to go back to "generational versions you rebuy." But the hardcore fans defend that as the way it should be!

Never had a PS console, only PSP & Vita, @NEStalgia.... Unless they come up with some killer exclusive game, by which I mean forever fully exclusive, I won't get a PS5
If I did, I never had the previous ones to have any of the games, so I wouldn't be affected by their policies on those, either

I'd hope we get to see some Fable gameplay before launch too. That's been in development since late 2017 as far as we know. You'd think they could manage more than a generic pre-rendered video (which may not have been pre-rendered nowadays, who knows).

That's probably my most anticipated Xbox exclusive at this point (I'm not considering the fact that Elder Scrolls 6 might be an Xbox exclusive yet, until they say so). I loved the first 2 Fable games, even though I didn't finish either of them. That series had so much more potential though, so with modern graphics and a proper open-world setup, it could really be something special.