We've made it: Microsoft deems El Reg relevant enough to have a play with the nerfed version of its upcoming Xbox With Lockdown 2: Electric Boogaloo hitting the UK this week, global coronavirus cases assuring us the only way is up, and Christmas cancelled, there's never been a better time to sit your bum down, swot up on that "hygge" thing, and learn what it means to stay at home. For real this time. But there's another reason to take on …
...if you break the mainstream gaming into three:
XBox,
Playstation,
PC
whilst ignoring the smaller consoles such as Switch for a moment, then surely all you do is cut off access to 2/3 of your market?
Giving earlier access to one system or the other, I can understand but to ignore the others completely? Seems daft.
Exclusives are the main reason to pick one console over another. So as Microsoft has no exclusives then there is little reason to own an xbox.
Sony has been releasing older titles to PC recently, but I suspect a large part of the reason for that is to entice PC gamers to get a Playstation so that they can play the latest iterations of these older games without having to wait 4 or 5 years for a PC release.
"...Exclusives are the main reason to pick one console over another. So as Microsoft has no exclusives then there is little reason to own an xbox..>"
Halo?
Sony has been releasing older titles to PC recently, but I suspect a large part of the reason for that is to entice PC gamers to get a Playstation so that they can play the latest iterations of these older games without having to wait 4 or 5 years for a PC release
It doesn't really work though, does it? Whilst I agree my sample size is small, my own limited experiences are that people stick to their preferred platform in the same way that phone users stick to their own preferred OS of choice. I have never heard of anyone wanting to switch platforms simply to get an exclusive title.
I find the naming of XBox completely baffling and unintuitive. XBox Series X is supposedly newer / better than XBox One, but judging by the name I wouldn't think it.
Playstation's naming convention is so much simpler and intuitive. Why didn't they just call it XBox Two or XBox 2020?
Also, looking at Forza 4 I don't really see that much of a difference. The grass still looks like a plane with a texture or picture of grass pasted over it.
They already have XBox, XBox One and XBox 360, which are all totally confusing and inconsistent names.
So at least they're consistently being inconsistent.
This is from the company that bought you Windows 3, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 95 SE (Second Edition), Windows 95 ME (Millenium Edition), Windows NT 3.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.
It was 95 OSR2, after 95 and before 98.
Clearly the point is made that Microsoft has considerable form for confusing version numbers. No-one can quite remember what order they came in. It was all sensible up to Windows NT 3.51, then Windows 95 came along and all sense of numerical continuity went out of the window.
"It was all sensible up to Windows NT 3.51, then Windows 95 came along and all sense of numerical continuity went out of the window."
Now you are getting confused too! WinNT 3.51 bears no relation to Win95 or the ancestors of Win95. NT was a completely different branch. The two branches merged with WinXP. And everyone is forgetting Windows 1 and Windows 2 and their various point releases as well as special 286 and 386 versions.
They had a numerical and chronological relationship. You had Win 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, NT 3.0, Win 3.1, WfW 3.1, NT 3.1, WfW 3.11, NT 3.5, NT 3.51, released in that order. Then came Windows 95, which I guess the marketing department decided was 91.49 versions more advanced than 3.51.
Yes, the XBox One was- obviously- the third-generation XBox. Similarly, there's absolutely no risk of confusion whatsoever between the XBox One X (a high-end variant of the XBox One) and the XBox Series X (the fourth-generation console that's just been announced). Nor the XBox One S and the XBox Series S.
Thank you, marketing tossers. Say what you like about Sony, but at least you know which generation of the PS1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 is which.
Then again, nothing new for Microsoft, their naming schemes have always been a complete mess, same name for different things and different names for the same thing (e.g. Microsoft Passport went under countless names).
Until the release of the Xbox One, it was fairly understandable.
Then the Xbox One (the later one) meant that I didn't know what to call my Xbox one (the one before the 360). Xbox Original? Original Xbox? just Xbox?
Whoever has been in charge of product identity after the Xbox 360 really needs to be shot.
Plus, this whole "upgrade the spec in the middle of a product lifecycle" thing just adds to the confusion, and Sony is just as bad.
Frequent renaming of things is another Microsoft predilection. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky it's still called an XBox, and hasn't suffered multiple rounds of inexplicable identity changes like Team Foundation Server/Visual Studio Team Services/Azure DevOps, or Office Communication Server/Lync/Skype For Business.
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Still, we're hip and relevant enough for the hobbled version of Microsoft's next-gen gaming platform
I think you should sit in the corner for a while and reflect on the fact that you’re obviously deemed less “hip and relevant” than the Daily Telegraph, of all people, who were allowed to see the full-fat version...
I'll still be getting a PS5, the one with the cd slot. Whilst Sony are trying to push gamers down the same route, I'm still not overly happy about having all of my content and data held at the behest of an online service - and I still quite like the idea of being able to trade games in at my local branch of Game or CEX.
That MS have no original next gen content available at release is really unforgiveable though
Agreed, I have a sizeable collection of games for the last 3 generations and I'd like that to continue to remain for PS5, although I'll be waiting about a year or so before I pull the trigger on this one, for a number of reasons:
Plus, there's always the possibility that Sony re-releases Bloodborne for PS5 with 60 fps...
I'm hanging fire on a full fat PS5 until after Christmas. I wasn't entirely aware that Sony were pulling some Nintendo-like "limited availability" shtick to try and ramp up demand for pre-orders (actually I didn't even know when the PS5 was meant to be launching). Come to think of it, I don't think I've purchased any of the PS at launch, I usually wait a few months for one reason or another.
One of the most important points is that of all the PS5 games touted only GT7 and Deathloop pique my interest and neither are launch titles. On the upside the backwards compatibility is nice as is the graphical uplift on some games. Plus the 12 or so games that they'll allow you grab if you're on PSN.
I'll go for full-fat as traditionally the physical media is cheaper than the manufacturer's own digital offerings. Plus you can still dabble in the second hand market. And nowadays no matter what media you buy you'll undoubtedly have a multi-GB day one patch to download anyway!
I've been searching t'webs but haven't found a straight answer anywhere. Can you actually 'buy a game' for these new consoles, or do you HAVE to subscribe to something monthly? I'm almost tempted by the cheaper one, but it stops being cheap when you're spending loads each month on subscriptions. My IT equipment is low power linux boxen, and a windows box supplied by work which is probably powerful enough for Tetris but not much else. I just want to play Just Cause 3 occasionally for the explosions and sillines ;-) (I am aware of 4, but 3 looks more fun to me)
You can indeed buy games outright for the Series S, you just need to do it digitally via the Microsoft Store, which is accessible via the console's dashboard. The game is then tied to your Microsoft account so it would follow you system to system and install/uninstall as necessary. It's the same for the Series X, though you can also buy game discs for that if you wanted to. Note that playing games online (multiplayer) does, however, require a subscription to Xbox Live, which is one of the shittier things about Xbox.
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