Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@BAMozzy I’m beyond impressed. That’s some seriously good looking BC. If anything would convince me to get an Xbox then that would!

@BAMozzy

Good video showing off the great work MS have done. There are a lot of articles at the moment where writers are sharing the experiences with load times, the quick resume feature and the BC of the machine and how it improves games. I think MS have really done fantastic work with the console. My only wish was that there was a digital version of equal power to the main console. Everyone seems to have a lot of positive words regading the console.

Today I started selling my Wii games and in the meantime I started to inventory my 360 games. Considering how good the BC seems to work on XBSX I'm wondering if those games value may increase... Or will Gamepass kill them all?

@andreoni79 Maybe - but maybe not. Games are not 'permanent' on Game Pass and not like PS+/Gold where as long as you keep Game Pass, any game you may of downloaded remains playable indefinitely. To be playable, you need an Active GP subscription AND the game has to be available on GP so if they remove it, you lose access to the game unless you buy it. There is a discounted price to purchase digitally if you want to own it permanently but some may want to own the disc.

It seems that MS are 'investigating' whether they can add more games to the Backwards Compatibility Library (From PureXbox https://www.purexbox.com/news/2020/10/xbox_investigating_addi... 8th Oct 2020) so maybe we will see some games coming that people may want to play that are not currently in Game Pass. Not everyone has Game Pass either. Its difficult to predict whether your discs will change in value as a result of availability through Game Pass or not. Personally, I think the value will depend more on whether or not they are on the BC list. Not sure if that's for the better or not because on the one hand, you have many more people that could play the game compared to those that are only playable on a 360 so maybe more 'desirable' but only other hand, they maybe easier to get hold of digitally - either in store, via Game Pass or maybe even given away as a Games with Gold.

I still have all my OG and 360 games too but don't really think about their value. It would be cool to see more titles added but I would also be OK if they looked to 'enhance' many of the games that haven't as quite a few were added before XB1X came out - no doubt they will be checking to see which games work with their ML HDR Algorithm and which games they can double the frame rates and increase the resolution on so I expect to see more information in the future.

@andreoni79 Honestly I think the value for certain 360 games will increase if they're NOT backwards compatible if anything

Bringing those games forward to current gen will definitely keep them relevant and not prone to turning into scalper's items for a while

@BAMozzy Thanks for the reply! There's no chance I'll buy a Series X too, but the idea that unique games like Shadows of the Damned and Binary Domain or classics like RDR, the Mass Effect and Dead Space trilogies may run perfectly is quite interesting.
I have another question if you please: does backward compatibility improve only the frame rate or does it also solve problems like pop-in and slow textures?

@andreoni79 It can solve pop-in and slow texture load in too. It also has 16x Anisotropic Filtering built in as standard which keeps textures looking much better at angles - stops them getting blurry.

Some games have additional benefits above the and beyond what the older consoles offered - like 720p games now at 4k, HDR added, 2x frame rate (so games capped at 30 run at 60fps) but these are on a game by game basis as some games 'break' or don't work as expected - animations fall down, HDR goes wrong etc because these were NOT built in or added after by the developers.

Texture pop in is down to 'slow' streaming so these are improved by faster and larger bandwidth design.

Did you see that Snoop Dog got a series X shaped fridge

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/10/28/xbox-and-snoop-dogg-un...

@blacklivesmatter And iJustine too

and you can win the 3rd one via Twitter...

They were also asking if people would be interested in an Series X mini fridge too...

@BAMozzy Would have thought the mini fridge would be based on the Series S lol. What next? A VCR in the design of the OG Xbox One?

@JohnnyShoulder LOL who could tell the difference? After all wasn't the OG Xbox One design based on the old VCR players anyway??

So Ray Tracing for DMCV won’t be on the Series S. It already can’t handle next gen at launch. It’s gonna get gimped games if it’s lucky, but more realistically it will not get some games. I said it was a bad idea and it’s already failing to be a next gen console at launch.

@Jaz007 I dunno, I think there’ll be a market out there for people with HD TVs who want the new Halo but would be willing to sacrifice visuals that they won’t really take advantage of. I think it’s actually a very shrewd move and one that will prove relatively popular, if niche.

@nessisonett I think in the short term it will, but when games skip it or get gimped enough it’ll get a bad rep and MS will get hit for being untrustworthy. The console will be fail to be an actual next gen console, and I think that’ll show more and more as times goes on. At the end of the day, I think it’ll be bad PR as it’s lasting impression. Short term you’re right I think.

@Jaz007 Yeah but MS are hoping that 4K TV numbers will be higher by mid-gen, which would push people towards buying an XSX by that point. Short term, absolutely it’s a good idea but I think they’re playing the long game as your digital purchases and Game Pass subscription would carry forward to an XSX.

@Jaz007
Well, this is awkward...

Demon's Souls, a highly anticipated, exclusive PS5 release, isn't able to utilise Ray Tracing either.

Being the Series S is a budget solution for the niche of those who may be ok with the downgrade in fidelity, and the fact there is no indication that games will skip the console which features full RDNA 2 (unlike the PS5), it would be completely ignorant to think games would no be able to scale (something which has been happening for PC and mobile phones for years)

This last generation has easily shown a large power gap between stock PS4 and XBOne, to the Pro and One X/S, yet games still have been able to be released on all offerings.

So this power discrepancy is not anything new. Series S is a budget offering, and will have a niche.

@JGRockford Demon’s Souls can’t raytrace? They said it could if they had chosen that. More like they never planned for it to do that, it wasn’t part of the vision, ever. We don’t know what RDNA features means yet. Xbox Series X doesn’t have the power advantage that both consoles have over the S (it has a teraflop advantage while PS5 has a big SSD advantage). Pro/One X does not compare, because games are designed on to run on a normal PS4 with Pro/X advantages. That is the lowest common-dominator, which S is less powerful enough that for a niche market developers may not want to scale back overall game deign, because there’s a point where it just doesn’t work on lesser hardware in a way that’s worth doing or playing.
Games can scale yes, but there’s a point where the scaling DA: Inquisition or Shadow of Mordor.
So yes, a gimped console at the start of a gen is absolutely new and could easily have problems later on when games are pushing the real PS5/Series X hardware. It’ll be a the problem child or devs just won’t want to deal with it. I’d say that’s worth betting money on. This is Uncharted territory and MS said the S is just supposed to be a lower resolution, that’s it. It’s already being proven false before the gen has started.

I copied this question from Nintendolife since still nobody answered my question.

I want to ask about softmodding Xbox Classic (OG XBOX) to bypass Region Lock and getting the DLC songs for Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 1 - 4.

DDR Ultramix 1 - 4 are the only Xbox Classic games i have interest about but unfortunately the DLC songs from Xbox Live have been terminated long time ago so the only way to get all DLC songs for DDR Ultramix series by modding the machine and copy the DLC files from internet.

I know i don't play with modded machine anymore but for Xbox Classic case, maybe i have no choice but have to mod the machine to bypass the region lock and get all DLC contents.
But still i want to play with the original games in disc, so how to softmod the Xbox Classic properly and still able to play with Original disc ?

@Anti-Matter I could be wrong, but I sincerely doubt you’ll find anyone here that knows how.