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[IbizaPocholo]

With Xbox Series X, compatibility and accessibility is just as important to Microsoft as improving graphical fidelity

Jason Ronald, the director of program management for Xbox Series X, details Microsoft's vision for the future of gaming

www.gamesradar.com

For GamesRadar's investigation into the Future of Gaming – as part of the Future Games Show – we sat down with Jason Ronald, the director of program management for Xbox Series X. While Ronald wasn't able to tease what will be in July's Inside Xbox showcase, he was able to invite us into team Xbox's dream for the future of gaming.

"One of the exciting things about launching a new generation console is you're really setting the direction for the next seven to 10 years of game development. You're going to see entire new classes of games; transformative gameplay experiences that you've never seen before," Ronald tells me.

Setting the direction for the next decade of game development is no easy task. Microsoft says it is in a position to do this because of the Xbox Series X – what it believes will be the most powerful and compatible next-generation console. "The Xbox Series X delivers a level of performance never before seen in console," he continues. "We're really focused on the perfect balance of power, speed, and compatibility, unlike anything you've seen in prior generations."

"Here at Xbox, when we think about the future of gaming, we're really focused on reaching all gamers, all across the planet. Empowering them to play the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want – with the console at the center of the living room experience."

"As we move into this next generation with Xbox Series X, we're really committed to tearing down all the barriers that exist in the ecosystem," says Ronald as he details what that commitment encompasses. "That includes things like cross-network play, cross-generational play. The fact that your entire game library – your gaming history, your gaming legacy, your progression, your achievements – all move forward with you. And we want to make sure that players can play together, regardless of what device that they choose to play on. Because, once again, we really want to make sure that everybody's able to play regardless of the device they choose to play on and they have that great shared experience together."

How that vision coalesces is with a launch line-up of thousands of games from across four generations of Xbox consoles available on Xbox Series X from day one. This includes the 100s of first- and third-party games available through Microsoft's subscription service, Game Pass, as well a commitment to ensuring that backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware – no downclocking or boost modes here, it's the power of a new system being used to enhance graphical fidelity, load times and overall performance of your favourite games.

"It's important that games from multiple generations are all playable and play best on Xbox Series X," Ronald says, "because, as gamers, we all have this love of the franchise's that we played over time, and we want want to make sure that all of these games can move forward with you as you transition into the next-generation."

check the link for more

 

[Tiamat2san]

Show us the fucking games!

 

[Jtibh]

Any firm date for the july show?

 

[Potato Chip PRO]

Show us the fucking games!

July is taking FOREVER!!!!!!!!! It's killing ME!

 

[oldergamer]

thats an old quote.

 

[JLMC469]

Leaks!!!!! Date for the event?!?!

 

[the_master]

Will buy day one. But I don't like this vision AT ALL. I want new games, for console only. I don't care or event want cross play and definitely not cross gen, definitely not that. I want a console with unique games.
This could be the last MS console I care about

 

[mercclass]

I will translate everything he said... In Haiku form

Nothing new to play
Play old games you have beaten
Give us two more years

- Microsoft

 

[SaucyJack]

"Here at Xbox, when we think about the future of gaming, we're really focused on reaching all gamers, all across the planet. Empowering them to play the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want – with the console at the center of the living room experience."

Still trying to get Windows in the living room then?

 

[Captain Hero]

I will translate everything he said... In Haiku form

Nothing new to play
Play old games you have beaten
Give us two more years

- Microsoft

Facts

 

[Kumomeme]

I will translate everything he said... In Haiku form

Nothing new to play
Play old games you have beaten
Give us two more years

- Microsoft

 

[Gavon West]

Will buy day one. But I don't like this vision AT ALL. I want new games, for console only. I don't care or event want cross play and definitely not cross gen, definitely not that. I want a console with unique games.
This could be the last MS console I care about

Um.....new games will be there day one. Dont like cross play? Dont cross play. Dont want Cross Gen? Dont Cross Gen. Want unique games? They'll be there day one. I could see your point if every Series X came with Phil Spencer holding a gun to your head, but.....

 

[PontiusFeeb]

"transformative"

Does that mean the games will change from robots into vehicles?

 

[ThatOneGrunt]

Man you guys love to shit on Xbox here. This is a pretty innocent article.

 

[Dr Bass]

BC is great because we don't want to lose old games to time.

At the same time, no one markets a new 4k blu ray player saying, "and you can still watch Metropolis."

 

[quest]

BC is great because we don't want to lose old games to time.

At the same time, no one markets a new 4k blu ray player saying, "and you can still watch Metropolis."

No but if your new 4k player did not play regular blurays and dvds with an option to upscale them there would be an issue. With disc players it is taken for granted. Consoles not so much so Microsoft should talk about it especially the options to make old games run better.

 

[Dr Bass]

No but if your new 4k player did not play regular blurays and dvds with an option to upscale them there would be an issue. With disc players it is taken for granted. Consoles not so much so Microsoft should talk about it especially the options to make old games run better.

I think you kinda misunderstood the point, and yeah, I agree with you.

 

[Nikana]

Man you guys love to shit on Xbox here. This is a pretty innocent article.

 

[Tiamat2san]

July is taking FOREVER!!!!!!!!! It's killing ME!

And we don’t even know when in July !
Imagine it’s July 31.....
Fuuuuuuck!

 

[Potato Chip PRO]

And we don’t even know when in July !
Imagine it’s July 31.....
Fuuuuuuck!

With our luck, they would pull off that shit! Hahaha

 

[Mister Wolf]

Man you guys love to shit on Xbox here. This is a pretty innocent article.

Dont trip, that Halo Infinite gameplay next month will shut them up.

 

[Mister Wolf]

And we don’t even know when in July !
Imagine it’s July 31.....
Fuuuuuuck!

Drop that shit on the 4th. With a tear in his eye Spencer can close by saying "God bless Xbox and God bless America"

 

[Gravemind]

Man you guys love to shit on Xbox here. This is a pretty innocent article.

It's best to just laugh at these sad people who honestly have nothing better to do.

 

[Roberts]

BC is great because we don't want to lose old games to time.

At the same time, no one markets a new 4k blu ray player saying, "and you can still watch Metropolis."

That is not exactly true. If you follow film news about UHD, there is usually quite a lot of attention pointed towards older movies coming to the format. Most recently Sony's Columbia Classics Collection that includes Lawrence of Arabia, Gandhi and many others. But that is mostly because the format is kept alive by passionate film collectors who are ready to shell out money for the same movie over and over again.

 

[Knightime_X]

Get OG Xbox's Castlevania Curse of Darkness to work on XSX and you won in my eyes.

 

[The Pleasure]

You gonna talk and show us some new games? No? You're gonna focus on power and speed?

 

[SegaShack]

I'm glad that at least one company cares about BC this gen.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Hmm, that sounds really interesting.

I might pick series x on launch instead of ps5 if all this is true.

I just hope they come up with only one must play title. Preferably a new ip.

 

[Stilton Disco]

No one buys a new console to play old games.

It's a nice feature to have, and MS is awesome for including it, but they're deluding themselves if they genuinely think it's anything but entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

The only things that really matter are exclusive, desirable games and price. Anything else is just garnish.

There's a reason the Switch has outsold the XO, despite the latter having over a 3 year head start, with zero backward compatibility and vastly less powerful hardware.

 

[DarkMage619]

Planting the seeds for that 4tf box that next gen games will be designed around.

Yaaayyy, gaming for everyone.

I guessing you think PC will be holding back XSX games too huh. So many 'concerned' for the XBOX! I too hope they'll be OK.

No one buys a new console to play old games.

It's a nice feature to have, and MS is awesome for including it, but they're deluding themselves if they genuinely think it's anything but entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

The only things that really matter are exclusive, desirable games and price. Anything else is just garnish.

There's a reason the Switch has outsold the XO, despite the latter having over a 3 year head start, with zero backward compatibility and vastly less powerful hardware.

Good thing XSX will play new games too! Whew! Problem SOLVED! I was worried a sec that it would ONLY play original XBOX games.

 

[Victoria3D]

Microsoft finally realizing the main point of PC gaming.

No one buys a new console to play old games.

That is just patently false. Getting to play Xbox/Xbox 360 games in 4K is the entire reason I bought an Xbox One X.

Why would anyone buy a Microsoft console to play new games when they’re releasing all their new games for PC now?

There's a reason the Switch has outsold the XO, despite the latter having over a 3 year head start, with zero backward compatibility

What a laughable thing to follow up on. The Switch is a port machine.

If it was only about good new games then the Wii U would have sold better than the Xbox One. Half the good games on the Switch are Wii U ports!

 

[saintjules]

Any firm date for the july show?

 

[nemiroff]

Man you guys love to shit on Xbox here. This is a pretty innocent article.

I tend to look at the positive; It's a honeypot for my ignore list.

I for one could live without backwards compatibility, but I do actually use it, and it is still only a good thing.

 

[Mistershine.]

"transformative"

Does that mean the games will change from robots into vehicles?

No, they'll change from men into men with fake vaginas.

 

[THE DUCK]

Only a true die hard sony exclusive fan could argue that enhanced backwards compatibility is a bad thing. They even secretly want it for thier sony system too (or for some not secretly) . I know I would like it for my ps5.

Any gamer with a decent digital collection in the Xbox ecosystem is going to benefit from this in a good way. Between the potential upscale, frame rate improvements, and almost zero load times, it will be a great selling feature to not supercede but augment the upcoming next gen games.

Even gamers who have zero current Xbox games owned could easily benefit, say your a ps4 owner who never had an xbox one, why wouldn't you want to try some xbox exclusive games from the previous gen at thier best performance? Also game pass may open an inexpensive door to a lot of great older games......

 

[GHG]

I guessing you think PC will be holding back XSX games too huh. So many 'concerned' for the XBOX! I too hope they'll be OK.

Here's what I had to say on this subject months ago:

If course its not my preference, I'm an enthusiast and would rather they build games around the highest level of spec possible. If it was up to me, the moment the boundary is crossed into next gen they should make games for next gen platforms only. If it was up to me they would build games with mid-high end PC's as the baseline, even if it meant a console port was impossible. I've had a PC more powerful than the Xbox One X this entire generation and it's barely broken sweat until very recently. However, I'm not stupid enough to think that that's how all development studios will work, especially 3rd parties, there will be a transitional period for monetary reasons.

So in the realm of reality all we can do is look at where the baseline is and start to think about what a reasonable baseline is. I'm of the opinion that the original Xbox One is far below where that baseline should be going into 2021 when the new consoles release. It's a huge performance delta that will have implications. Developers will either be looking at a CDPR situation where they are struggling to get their games running on the older hardware, or they will have gone the other way where a lot of overhead is left on the table with the higher end consoles due to developing around the lower end consoles. If the performance delta is reduced and the baseline is brought up (to Xbox One X levels for example) then there's not such a huge gap to have to wrestle with. A happy medium can be struck and it means even if you're taking the baseline into consideration when making design choices, the higher end platforms don't suffer as much.

If you're a developer you should know this, there comes a point where you simply have to advise your clients to upgrade their hardware because you will no longer support what they currently have with new features. It's not anti-consumer for doing so, it's common sense, it's how we progress. Real progress doesn't happen at the top end, real progress happens when we lift the baseline.

And this is where it baffles me. We are supposedly on an enthusiast board and we have people on here championing the baseline being so low. People championing the fact that they will spend $400-600 on new hardware only for games to not be built around it. Microsoft are a first party developer, if anyone can afford to throw caution to the wind and develop for their next gen console from the ground up it should be them. I will be playing their titles on PC, it would be wonderful to see the boundaries really being pushed to levels we've never seen before. A modern day "Crysis moment" if you like. But hey, "when everyone plays, we all win" right?

Sorry, I can't get on board with their strategy, and I really can't understand why anyone who is engaged enough to invest in the new console day one would either.

People should demand better.

Sorry for wanting high end hardware to be utilised and built around correctly.

Sorry for not excusing low end hardware being the baseline for yet another generation.

We should look forwards, not backwards. If not we will never progress at the rate we should.

 

[The Hamburglar]

Microsoft finally realizing the main point of PC gaming.



That is just patently false. Getting to play Xbox/Xbox 360 games in 4K is the entire reason I bought an Xbox One X.

Why would anyone buy a Microsoft console to play new games when they’re releasing all their new games for PC now?



What a laughable thing to follow up on. The Switch is a port machine.

If it was only about good new games then the Wii U would have sold better than the Xbox One. Half the good games on the Switch are Wii U ports!

just because you bought a console to play old game in 4K doesn’t mean most people do, you’re in the minority. BC Didn’t boost sales of Xbox one.

 

[Sony]

Planting the seeds for that 4tf box that next gen games will be designed around.

Yaaayyy, gaming for everyone.

If you're implying Series X/Lockhart will hold nextgen back.
If Series S/Lockhart has the same technology as Series X, but a lower-end silicon, then games don't need to 'designed around' a weaker box.
Developers can have options to make games run on slower hardware, like dynamic resolutions, lower framerates, decreasing Image Quality , no ray-tracing etc.
I expect the 6TF Xbox One X to be a much, much bigger bottleneck for next gen than the 4TF Series S/Lockhart.

 

[Roberts]

Why the hell are you concerned about a feature for a console that you will never buy anyway? In every damn thread about Xbox BC. To be honest, it is a bit pathetic. There must be enough people using it; otherwise they wouldn't spent so much time and effort on it.

 

[oldergamer]

If ps5 had this and xbox didnt, certain sony fans would sing a different tune

 

[theclaw135]

Breath of the Wild alone had more heart put into it than the PS4 and XB1 launch lineups together, and it wasn't even exclusive.

 

[the_master]

Um.....new games will be there day one. Dont like cross play? Dont cross play. Dont want Cross Gen? Dont Cross Gen. Want unique games? They'll be there day one. I could see your point if every Series X came with Phil Spencer holding a gun to your head, but.....

I want games that take full advantage of the console hardware and features. If I don't want cross gen, I will have it regardless, I will have my console games designed to work with the old gen hardware. That until they make xsex only games. But there will also be the pc dragging it. And it is not a matter of "the pc will be the most piwerfull soon" it is a matter of "we want as ma y players as we can reach, including 95% of pc players with ild computers, so our games need to be possible in there"
And "We want to reach out to everyone so we need to make games easier and dum er and more casual so everyone can play, like the Wii"

 

[Rentahamster]

Hopefully it's early July.

 

[SleepDoctor]

I guessing you think PC will be holding back XSX games too huh. So many 'concerned' for the XBOX! I too hope they'll be OK.



Good thing XSX will play new games too! Whew! Problem SOLVED! I was worried a sec that it would ONLY play original XBOX games.

Just hit the report button. Every thread has to be derailed into an Xbox bash thread. Just look at the thread Thread about the free upgrade for Ps5 and has nothing to do with Xbox.

Do the same in a Ps5 thread and these same warriors will report you. Fuckin pathetic.

OT: I don't care so much for bc. The free upgrade is nice but Im just waiting the July event.

 

[RPS37]

Can we just get a date for the event?

 

[pasterpl]

Can we just get a date for the event?

soon


but in all seriousness i am expecting that we will find out the July event date around 1 wk before the actual event

 

[ZywyPL]

No one buys a new console to play old games.

That's why Sony is so much into remasters, remakes, and reboots, am I right? Plus, you probably have no friends so you cannot understand the idea behind cross-play.

 

[pasterpl]

That's why Sony is so much into remasters, remakes, and reboots, am I right? Plus, you probably have no friends so you cannot understand the idea behind cross-play.

I never get why people are excited about remasters and remakes, maybe it is just me? after finishing a game a very rarely feel the need to play it again.

 

[theclaw135]

I never get why people are excited about remasters and remakes, maybe it is just me? after finishing a game a very rarely feel the need to play it again.

Gaming has massive turnover. Each console generation is a shot to introduce a game to millions of new players.

 

[SleepDoctor]

I never get why people are excited about remasters and remakes, maybe it is just me? after finishing a game a very rarely feel the need to play it again.

I don't have a problem with remakes/remasters of games I may have missed but this gen has been a disappointment in that regard. We've gotten remaster on top of remaster and most are unwarranted or not even asked for.

TLOU release in may or June of 2013 and we gotta remaster June of 2014. Talk about a cash grab. BC would have been nicer than having your fanbase have to rebuy the game again a year later.