The Xbox Series X, Holiday 2020 (1 Viewer)

[Alf S]

My son (8) wants me to trade in our XB360 and get him a new XB1S Minecraft Edition console for Xmas. Any decent deals/offers floatin around out there?

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Keep an eye on the Black Friday sites. I'm sure there will be something.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The early leaked deals seem to be the Xbox One S for $250. I think the Minecraft bundle is one of them. Honestly, you can get a regular XBO for less than that right now (with Kinect and a game) if you check Groupon or ebay, so I wouldn't be surprised if the regular XBO ends up under $200 around Black Friday.

 

[Alf S]

What am I losing out on IF we opted to find a cheaper XBO vs. the S?

 

[LeoA]

Externally, it's smaller and I believe that the power supply is internal. And no Kinect port is built in, which requires an adapter if you actually wanted to use Kinect 2.0 for some reason.

Internally, it's my understanding that the S model has slightly beefed up internals that allow for a minor performance boost here and there, 4k streaming and UHD Blu-Ray support, the ability to upscale everything to 4k, and HDR capabilities if the game and your HDTV support it (Forza Horizon 3 supports it, for instance).

I personally think that unless you have a top of the line 4k display, you're not missing out on much. And if you did want to get the best experience possible, I'd still recommend considering the cheapest approach right now since a major revision is due next year.

Why spend a premium now for what amounts to a small upgrade, when a major one is right around the corner that you'd just want to trade this one in for in a few months time.

 

[Alf S]

Thanks for the info. I 'm not a gamer (no patience for it..lol) and don't have a 4K set and won't any time soon. Maybe XBO route may work out. Only hiccup is he really likes that the Minecraft S is full of all the Minecraft stuff he want to play.

Decisions decisions.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I believe there may be a regular Xbox One, non-S version, bundle that has Minecraft and all that stuff with it, and still for less than the new console. However, if there are no regular XBO deals for black Friday and the difference between a regular one and the S bundle is $30...might not be the worst thing to get the S.

 

[Alf S]

True. Thanks

 

[Sam Posten]

I expect BIG deals for both consoles on BF. I thought there wouldn't be much at all last year and they destroyed those expectations. Now that I'm actually hoping to see them step on the gas this year I hope to be blown away.

 

[Bryan^H]

For those interested, the Xbox One S Minecraft system is on sale for $249 at the Microsoft store
https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/home
Also comes with a $25 gift card, free(limited selection) game+ free shipping.

That is about as good as it gets without standing in line for 8 hours.

 

[Sam Posten]

Highly recommended

 

[Morgan Jolley]

So MS worked with a couple websites (I believe Eurogamer and Digital Foundry?) to release some info on Scorpio. In short, it's more powerful than anything else out there (real shocker, I know). The biggest difference I saw in the list of specs was 12 GB of RAM versus the 8 in the One S or PS4 Pro. Otherwise, it's a little more powerful than the Pro, has more cores, and whatnot. The example one article gave was that it could run Forza in 4K at 60 FPS, all things that are subjective and speak more to the quality of the developer than to the quality of the hardware, frankly. But it's certainly the most powerful console out there, which would be expected since its, you know, the latest to get a release.

They talked about how One and 360 games will run better on it but...that's it. They're going for a premium market and it will probably be $500 (according to Eurogamer's guess).

Still no word about VR, new games being announced, or anything like that. Probably holding out for E3 for anything exciting.

Considering the One is so far behind Sony right now and this is targeting a niche-ish market, I have no idea how MS thinks this will do much good. It will be undercut in price by the PS4 and other Xbox One consoles. They promised to not make Scorpio-exclusive games, so there isn't much reason for people to upgrade. The only time MS "beat" Sony was with the 360, when they released an entire year in advance and still got outsold by the end of the generation. And anyone look for a "different" experience might end up with a Switch or mobile platform, which is considerably cheaper.

Oh, and the rumor floating online is that the final retail name will be Xbox One X. Which could be great (X is a later letter than S, shortening to "1X" is kind of cool) or awful (X sounds like S, S and X are one letter away from SEX, X1X looks weird, etc.).

 

[LeoA]

Looks like an impressive machine. I just wonder what the cost will be, the long-term viability of water cooling, if back compatibility will be a struggle where allowing the system to be unlocked for higher sustained frame rates and such is concerned, and if by making this another Xbox One, if they can really maximize its capabilities. When the software must also run on regular Xbox One hardware and Xbox One S hardware, that surely will constrain them to a degree.

All in all, it makes me want to wait and see what happens before making any purchases, which reinforces what I've been thinking for a while. I keep waiting for stability and for hardware to reach $200 or so before buying Sony or Microsoft's hardware. Yet something significantly improved then appeared for both systems right around when that became possible. And Nintendo's handheld revision history suggests I can expect the same for the Switch.

So with my huge PS3/360 backlog and several nice Wii U (And a few 3DS) games left to be enjoyed along with hundreds of classic games, I'm thinking of just sticking to the past from here on out. Maybe when the PS4 Super XL + revision and the Super Duper Xbox One X Max Edition reach the end of their lifespans and a true next-gen successor appears or console gaming changes completely to something like a streaming model, I'll bite at the very tail end.

So MS worked with a couple websites (I believe Eurogamer and Digital Foundry?) to release some info on Scorpio.

They're one and the same, actually. Digital Foundry is just the name of Eurogamer's YouTube channel for their more technically oriented videos and a section of their website dedicated to their articles on the topic.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Nintendo's treating the Switch more like a home console than a handheld. I don't know if they'll have a revision any time soon, really.

Console gaming is different from, say, mobile or PC gaming because you have a much more limited scope for what you can do but traded off with the idea that it just works out of the box and you don't have issues. So while it's really cool that Scorpio is super powerful, that needs to be considered against the specific Xbox One closed ecosystem that MS has.

In other words, what exclusive games does the Xbox Scorpio have over Nintendo or Sony? And that's why I think it's not going to succeed. It's really powerful but you can get the same games with an as-good-or-better experience right now on PC (literally the same because of the cross-platform stuff MS has done). So why bother buying their (probably) $500 or more piece of hardware in (probably) November?

 

[LeoA]

Nintendo's treating the Switch more like a home console than a handheld. I don't know if they'll have a revision any time soon, really.

At the risk of derailing the thread, what makes you think that Nintendo is treating it more as a home console than a handheld?

I fully expect to see a significant Switch revision in 2019 with typical improvements like enhanced battery life and upped internal storage. And I would not be shocked to see a major mid-gen refresh in 2020 sold as a premium option just like the competition has done, using Nvidia's next-gen chipset, the Tegra P1.

In the console and handheld world, hardware refreshes have became the norm. The Switch won't escape it unless it doesn't live up to its potential and starts to stagnate after a promising launch.

 

[Alf S]

My son rarely uses his Switch via the TV. All handheld.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Person-to-person, the primary use of the Switch is different. I've seen people saying online that they always/never use it in handheld mode. But the way that Nintendo is marketing it is much more in line with the Wii U or Wii than with the 3DS. Partially, it may be similar to how the original DS was marketed as the "third pillar" (next to the GameCube and GBA) rather than their new handheld platform, which was probably a way to say they were supporting all 3 systems at once while also giving them an out to return to the GameBoy in case the DS failed. The Switch is being treated as "the thing replacing the Wii U" rather than "the thing replacing the Wii U and the 3DS." Will that be the case in a couple years? We'll see. But so far they're acting like it's a portable console rather than a portable, if that makes sense.

Considering the thing is $300, costs $257 to make (according to a teardown done by a Japanese site), and just went on sale, I doubt they'll do much to the base unit itself for a while. I'd love to see some new JoyCon styles or peripherals but they probably won't make an enhanced version of the hardware any time soon. You can already pop in a microSD card up to 2TB so there's no need to make a new one with more space, and Sony didn't see a huge bump in sales by making the PS4 Pro (nor do I expect MS will see a bump with Scorpio), so there's no real incentive to change it.

Honestly, minus a couple cosmetic revisions, how often have previous platforms in the console world really gotten mid-gen power boosts? GameBoy became GameBoy Color after 9 years (Pocket wasn't really more powerful), DS became DSi after 5 years, 3DS became New 3DS after 4 years (though, arguably, the New 3DS fixed the two biggest 3DS flaws: 2nd joystick and eye-tracking, with the power boost being otherwise unexciting). PSP got an updated to the PSPgo which was just cosmetic. PS Vita got a 2nd rev with a different shape and screen but no extra power. And no consoles have gotten refreshes with more power up until PS4 Pro and Scorpio. In the tablet world, there are new and more powerful devices released pretty much annually but the sales don't match them because people are quite content with their 2-3 year old devices. Phones tend to do better in this sense, but that's a pretty unique and specific case.

In short...I don't think there's adequate business motivation to make a "better" Switch. But if you're not set on it just yet, definitely hold off until it's cheaper and there are more games.

 

[LeoA]

If anyone objects at this sidetrack, just yell and we'll move it over to the Switch thread...

With that out of the way, while a revision certainly isn't imminent, come March 2019 the system will be turning two. And if my prediction hits that October, the system will already be at the halfway point of what's considered the traditional lifespan for a successful gaming system before replacement by a successor.

I bet we see the hardware refreshed that year, just as I was betting long ago that Nintendo would go the hybrid route combining their console and handheld lines with what became the Switch, and my belief that it made sense to delay Zelda and make it cross-platform.

And I'd further bet on a major upgrade in 2020. Sony and hopefully Microsoft are showing that it works in the console marketplace and Nintendo has a past with significant handheld upgrades, and Nvidia has just the chipset to offer a substantial upgrade that's backwards compatible.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The thing is, Sony and MS aren't showing that the mid-cycle upgrade works. The reason they're doing it is because other tech spaces (read: mobile and PC) have shown to be very competitive with console gaming for people's money/attention and have a 1-2 year turnover in new tech, so Sony and MS are trying to keep pace with that. However, console gaming is different because you can only get so much real value out of a brand new box if it is hampered by being in the same generation as the previous box. If a PS4 Pro and a regular PS4 play the exact same game on the exact same disc when it is release in 2 years, what was the point of someone upgrading from a regular PS4 to a Pro? The only real benefit you see for that extra $100 in price will be apparent if you have a brand-new 4K HDR TV...which an overwhelming number of people don't. Adoption rates for 4K TVs are way too low for it to be "worth it" for Sony or MS to release a premium product and expect it to do exceptionally well.

The impression I've gotten is that PS4 Pro and Scorpio exist so that Sony and MS can say that they have cutting edge tech in their platforms without actually relying on that to be what moves their hardware. For all intents and purposes, the Xbox One and PS4 are practically identical yet one is outselling the other 2-to-1. Why? Because of exclusive games. But "we have a lot more exclusive games" isn't as cool sounding as "we have the most powerful platform, and also this excellent cheaper option" when marketing their stuff.

The PS4 Pro hasn't sold so well that it has made a huge impression on Sony's sales numbers. The Xbox brand will not be revitalized by Scorpio unless MS announces Gears 5, Halo 6, a new Forza, Crackdown, and like 5 other exclusives will be out this year and will be MUCH improved by the new hardware. And even then...Sony will probably outsell them by the holidays because they have the momentum.

This is all to say that, no, I don't think mid-gen upgrades for console gaming hardware will pan out as a good move. With Switch, maybe Nintendo will release one with more memory or a better screen, but I don't see them improving the internal chips unless it is solely to add a new feature (like New 3DS' eye-tracking feature). If they were to implement a big upgrade, it would probably be to create their next platform rather than just improve the Switch. Like I said before, there's only 1 area of tech where the frequent upgrade path works, and it's not in gaming hardware.

 

[LeoA]

Do you still need a credit card linked to your Xbox Live account, just to make Xbox digital purchases through the PC storefront?

I rely on gift cards and that limitation isn't present when you buy directly from your 360 or XB1, but my HDTV is down and I want to buy a card to redeem and grab Capcom Arcade Cabinet for the 360/XB1 off the PC storefront since it's on sale right now.

Is this odd restriction still in force (Which I recall bugging people like me that rely on subscription/points cards when the Games With Gold program was new; The PC storefront wouldn't let you "buy" the freebies each month from your PC without first linking your credit card to your Xbox Live account)?

Edit: Been told that the funds in your wallet can't be used at the PC storefront regardless if you have a credit card linked to your account. Direct credit card purchases only, for some bizarre reason.