Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@Anti-Matter https://www.instructables.com/The-Easiest-Way-To-Soft-Mod-An-...

Probably the easiest method but you’ll need a flash drive and a copy of an exploitable game such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell or 007: Agent Under Fire. It’s a hassle but you should then be able to find a guide to get your DLC. As much as it’s a moral grey area, honestly you’ve found a case that completely justifies softmodding your console.

@Jaz007 being it was the fact that the developers needed to budget the limited power of the PS5 for ray tracing.

Quoting the creative director:
It's like any other graphic improvement, there is a cost. If we had implemented ray tracing in the game, that would mean that we would have had to leave something out.

RDNA features:
Well, there's been a couple of cases where the Principal Graphics Engineer stated the PS5 utilises a combination of RDNA 1, with some RDNA 2 features (such as Ray Tracing), and that features such as machine learning will be missing.

imgur.com/a/5KKMRUT
imgur.com/a/N7EtiCS

Furthermore, in reading that:
This is the core reason why it doesn’t support things like Mesh Shading, Tier 2 VRS(unconfirmed), and as above, Machine Learning hardware support which has been already shown back in Feb running on Xbox Series X to be able to automatically upgrade real time original Xbox titles from non HDR period to HDR without any changes in coding using DirectML.

Having Microsoft delayed their dev kits (in comparison to how early Sony has sent out their's) may have allowed them to take advantage of more recent technology, and their transparency in hardware in recent months shows confidence in their product.

Saying that, the S is a budget offering which has been designed to scale their games. This is not at all new in regards to PC, or mobile phone, yet people seem to be ignorant of the fact that developers can design for XSX and PS5, and easily scale back to XSS. Tuning the game's features to run at certain benchmarks is standard when developers are working on multi platform.

In the manner of XSS's specifications, it has been built to scale down resolution (and it's textures), along with features if that power is needed.

Just like which has been done for Demon's Souls, which is focused on just the one platform.

Yeah, plenty games on Xbox One and PS4 run on significantly less powerful PCs with less RAM and slower hard drives. All Xbox Game Studios games will be on Windows 10 and will run on ‘worse’ hardware than the Xbox Series S. Most third party games will be on PC and also run on ‘worse’ hardware. The exception is Playstation Exclusives that mostly don’t launch on PC and therefore rarely are built around scalability and... they aren’t going to be on Xbox Series S.

@nessisonett
Well, i will ask to my video games repairman too about that soft modding way for Xbox Classic, just for curiosity since i still don't have any Xbox stuffs.

Btw, before i forget, i still have one question about Xbox 360.
Is Xbox360 Kinect region lock ?
I mean if my Xbox 360 machine is USA (without Kinect) but bought Xbox 360 Kinect PAL region from separated bundle, can i use that Kinect on Xbox 360 USA ?

@nessisonett nailed it!
If scaling up from baseline specifications was the only option, each generation would be limited to a much lower specced computer, worse than the XSS.

With that, we have games being developed that can easily scale back to XSS and beyond to older PCs, and it would be borderline idiotic to think software from this coming generation would be limited from being released on a Microsoft budget console, when those games have also catered for PC, and scaling for it's many specifications.

@Anti-Matter Kinect is just a glorified camera so it shouldn’t be region locked. Just make sure you have a plug adapter, we have three pronged plugs in PAL regions, as opposed to two pronged plugs in the USA.

I mean Demon Souls looks far and away the best next gen game we have seen so far. Does it matter that it has no ray tracing? It looks stunning as it is. Yes Sony have marketed that the console is capable of ray tracing, but early on in the generation comprises will sometimes have to be made. I'm not gonna go down the tit for tat road and point which games don't look great on the Series S. Enjoy the games on your chosen system rather then nit picking at what each can or cannot do.

@JohnnyShoulder I just don’t get it. PS fans in particular have this need to point out faults with Xbox. The thing is, it just doesn’t really affect people unless they own an Xbox. I don’t get why people are attacking the XSS when it’s not out yet, we have no clue the solutions in place and it honestly is a complete waste of time.

@nessisonett
Oh, i see.
Thanks for the quick answer. 😊

@nessisonett I think both are as bad as other tbh. Whenever I read an article on Pure Xbox there are always a few people having a dig at Sony for no apparent reason in the comments. It is pretty much the same on Push Square. I get this always goes on when a new generation is round the corner, but I've never really liked it even when I've been part of it.

Honestly as someone who's seen both of those elitist types first hand I can confirm both are equally cancerous

The jokes about PlayStation games being walking simulators or all looking the same not only got tiring to see really quickly but in the context of most of its exclusives, make no sense whatsoever, while the people constantly digging at Xbox for stuff like the lack of variety in its exclusive library got incredibly tiring extremely quickly

Also since the PS5 is less powerful than Series X a lot of these fanboys are naturally taking the "GRAPHICS DON'T MATTER AND THEY NEVER DID DESPITE THE FACT WE WOULDN'T STOP BRAGGING ABOUT OUR MORE POWERFUL CONSOLE BEFORE" approach, which is super childish and one-track minded

It's even funnier considering all three major console manufacturers follow each other on Twitter to my knowledge and Sony devs like Cory Balrog have made it publically known they buy non-Sony consoles for personal use. I'm pretty sure he has like 3 Nintendo Switches and two Xbox Ones

@JohnnyShoulder The thing is, nobody honestly believes the PS5 will be bad. All of the negativity has surrounded Sony’s rhetoric or lack thereof, or the general infrastructure like BC. I haven’t seen anybody say that PS5 will be a bad console and not be trolling. I’ve seen a lot of people going on about how the new Xbox will be a bad console. It’s just silly, they’re boxes at the end of the day and they’ll play vastly similarly. I don’t really think any console has been ‘bad’, at least not one I’ve played. I’m sure there’s someone out there who loved their Atari Jaguar. It’s just way too broad a subject to cover with such simple judgments. The Mega CD is widely ridiculed but it gave us Snatcher, Lunar: Silver Star Story and Popful Mail. Games are what truly make a console, not whatever RAM or Ray-tracing or whatever. It’s just noise.

@nessisonett Yeah let's be honest, the thing with Xbox is they obviously have stuff that will appeal more to casual consumers from a sheer value standpoint, with stuff like Game Pass and the Series S on top of their incredible BC program

Sony knows their *****'s expensive, but I'd be damned if I thought it didn't look so good, and truly evocative of what next-gen can be

@JohnnyShoulder @TheFrenchiestFry A console that holds back games is a bad idea to me. Anything that lowers the common denominator is a bad idea to me. MS or Sony. I’d call the S out too if Sony did it. Games may get scaled back on PC, but there’s a point where they wouldn’t pass for being released on a console and perform and look like trash. PC is also expendable as far as how the game performs and runs (if it runs) on lower power PCs compared to consoles, where an expectation for more consistent performance that’s better optimized (consoles are far more specifically optimized with more work to get more out of the power than any given PC setting.).
It has nothing to do with it being Xbox, but the concept itself for me.

@Jaz007 That would be an understandable mindset, but I feel like it would be more valid if Series X was just a non-entity. Series S is clearly not meant for the kind of person who is actively wanting that complete full-fat experience, or doesn't have the income for it but still wants to play today's games.

Series S is very clearly meant to be something for the casual crowd who might not even be acquainted with a specific console or brand. It may hold things back on a technical level, but your average joe is probably not even going to care about that. If they were really so concerned about that kind of stuff, they'd shell out the extra money for a Series X or even a PS5. It's nice to have the option there for the people who aren't going to be dedicating a lot of their spare time to that kind of intense gaming period, but still want to at least have access to those kinds of games, which is also why Game Pass is such a tempting value proposition

@TheFrenchiestFry If devs want to develop a game in mind for all consoles, they have to keep in mind the lowest common denominator, and the problem gets worse the longer the gen goes on. It affects and third party and MS first party unless they decide it’s a niche that’s not worth developing for or just letting it run poorly. It affects gaming as a whole is my issue.

@Jaz007 Yeah I mean the series S is not for me either but as @TheFrenchiestFry says it is mainly for the people that play only the same couple of games all the time and don't care about it being in 4K. Not sure why they wouldn't just stay on One X or S for now though, as I'm assuming they wouldn't be bothered about all the other advantages the series S brings either.

@JohnnyShoulder Two words. Ultimate Team. Sports games have been doing the rounds showing off the next-gen versions. I expect to see plenty consoles sold just on the promise of better sports games. Especially with The Show going multiplat this year.

In all my years of gaming, its always been the same when you have multiple options. At the start of this when Sony's launch line up wasn't as strong, there were Sony fanboys saying 'power mattered' and multi-platform games looking/running better mattered more because more of those are released and purchased - by the time the X came out and Sony hit their stride with first party, Exclusives mattered more, Xbox had the power but no games, even Backwards Compatibility didn't matter because 'no-one' wants to play old games on new hardware...

Its the same this time and there will be fanboys saying similar things. Even if they both ran games identically, both had the same quality and Genres of Exclusives, there will still be arguments over whether Forza is better than GT, whether Last of Us is better than Hellblade, Avowed is better than Horizon etc - just like we had whether Mario was better than Sonic.

Its always worse around the new console releases - especially in the build up to launch and how 'X' will give their preferred platform an advantage - or at least offset the perceived advantages of the other. ESRAM would equal PS4's faster RAM for example and then removing Kinect would somehow free up enough to bring parity. Even when one has an Advantage, the others will blame devs rather than admit the design choices of the platform manufacturer was perhaps wrong - especially when First Party devs build their games specifically for that hardware and can make choices that specifically fit within the capabilities of that hardware - why Forza and Gears can look incredible and run at a native 1080p but multi-platform games don't.

At the end of the day, if you are only interested in one platform, then it really shouldn't matter what the other platform does or has. Its not as if you will buy it because it has 'X' games or runs 'Y' games better. If Demon Souls does or does not have RT, what does it matter if you have no intention on buying a PS5 (or the game)? What difference does it make if Assassins Creed: Valhalla has a higher/lower (average) resolution if you are only going to buy it on your preferred platform. If you find out it runs a higher resolution on the other platform, are you going to jump platforms? Surely the only thing that matters is the way it runs on your platform and as long as it runs well, that matters most.

Things like 'performance' of games does matter to me to a 'small' degree because I have the choice of which platform I will be buying a game for and that factors in to my decision sometimes but if I only had one choice, I don't have to worry about what other platforms are capable of doing as it really doesn't matter.

With PC being added into the equation (as is very much the case with gamepass), XSS is far from the lowest benchmark.

Furthermore, it has been built specifically to run all games that are available to the XSX, scaling down in visual fidelity.

While I'm certainly not interested in purchasing the XSS, it has a legitimate niche of being able to run this coming generation's games, digital BC releases, and gamepass.

There is a market, and the way it scales with the XSX, with it's CPU and feature set, there's no reason at all to say it shouldn't scale through the generation as XSS is not the lowest denominator, and the simple fact that games scale down, and not up.

🙄