Bloomberg: Next Xbox won't be backwards-compatible
Speaking to an anonymous source, Bloomberg reports that the next Xbox will use a variant of AMD Jaguar technology, and that the switch to x86 architecture (much like PS4) will mean "game discs made for the current Xbox 360 won't be compatible."
Not much is known about Microsoft's next Xbox, codenamed Durango. It's been long-rumored to use AMD chips for both its CPU and GPU--a point that's been repeated by financial news service Bloomberg. Speaking to an anonymous source, Bloomberg reports that the next Xbox will use a variant of AMD Jaguar technology, and that the switch to x86 architecture (much like PS4) will mean "game discs made for the current Xbox 360 won't be compatible."
Sony's switch to x86 means that PS4 won't be able to play PS3 games either, although it plans on using Gaikai tech in some way to help in the transition.
Although Microsoft has yet to officially talk about the next Xbox--except to apologize over comments about the system being "always online"--The Verge claims that Microsoft is planning a reveal event for May 21st. What The Tech also reiterated that date, whilst also throwing some more tidbits into the rumor mill. BlockheadBrown has a quick summary in Chatty.
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Shacknews
replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Bloomberg: Next Xbox won't be backwards-compatible.
Speaking to an anonymous source, Bloomberg reports that the next Xbox will use a variant of AMD Jaguar technology, and that the switch to x86 architecture (much like PS4) will mean "game discs made for the current Xbox 360 won't be compatible."-
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But most people don't play their old games anyway. They just want to be able to play them on a new device even though only a small percent ever will play their old games.
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You have to admit that having back compatibility is nice thing to have when you consider most TVs only have 2-3 HDMI ports on it. It is more a convenience feature for those that still want to play their legacy games.
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Not every one has a setup like that not by a long shot. I have 3 on my TV tops split between by Cable Box, Bluray and a console.
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It is nice, but I don't think that many people use it so I just don't think in the scope of things it is that big of a deal. Basically put yourselves in the shoes of someone making a console. You probably have to make a bunch of compromises on the tech side to get backwards compatibility. So that means extra cost or changing the hardware in a way that you don't want like not going with X86 or something.
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Popular examples of that would be the Counter-Strike 1.6 and the original StarCraft. If you have the right software you can pretty much keep playing the games you played 20+ years ago.
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While true, if you couldn't...you just wouldn't, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. There's more games worth playing released every year than any sane person has time to play to completion.
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No one is arguing that there are no old games worth playing and that no one ever plays any old games ever. I am arguing it is a small percent of gamers that actually go back and play old console games if they have the ability to do so.
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If I told your the Xbox 720 could play all your Xbox 360 titles in native 1080p, 16X AF, MSAA 4X would you call your self a DUMBASS and say "that would be fucking cool!"
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This is the sort of backwards compatibility MS could do with the Next Xbox and what I would pay massive money and hard core value for it be one of the most epic features. Yes backwards compatibility that does not key [improve the original] game really does not matter much at all.-
If you were running a company would you want A. consumers to buy the hardware, its selling value not even covering its build cost then playing all their old games or B. would you want people to buy a lot of 60$ games, giving you some profit to offset the development/hardware costs?
If you picked A, you should never run a business, EVER
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There aren't many set-top box vendors left; Google sold off Motorola's cable box business, and Cisco owns what was once Scientific Atlanta.
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yah I'm kinda leaning toward Sony for my next-gen system... I don't like the direction MS is going.
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I think I'm just going to skip this generation and stick with PC gaming if these rumors are actually true but I'll probably check out the ps4 when it drops in price.
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There's no way they're that stupid and I have a funny feeling something's been lost in translation. It sounds suspiciously similar to the way the Xbox 360 currently handles playing downloadable content on an Xbox that doesn't have the license.
For example if I log in to my Xbox profile on my girlfriends Xbox then I can play any of my downloaded games provided I stay connected to Live. If the connection interrupts, I get something like 3 minutes to reconnect.
At home I don't need to be connected because the license is on my Xbox, so I can play offline all I want. If I was a betting man, I'd say these rumors that have been surfacing lately are related to something like that, rather than requiring a connection 100% of the time.-
True, but there's also the fact that NO ONE from Microsoft is trying to deny this, I know that there's a school of thought in PR that states that there's no bad publicity but this is ridiculous.
You don't have to come out ahead of time and say "Xbox [insert name here] is not gonna be online all the time" all they have to do is laugh it up, how this notion of being online all the time is ridiculous and boom! rumors are squashed.-
if a company always comes out to deny rumors the moment they start then it implies any unresponded to rumor is true, and it kills the company's ability to control the PR/marketing cycle themselves
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Such is the price of holding out for a pre-E3 unveil.
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sure, but it's a perpetual problem for lots of products
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Honestly though, if they do their press event in May and they completely kick ass and all these rumors are wrong... All of this stuff will be forgotten. If they really do have nothing to hide, I don't think any irreparable damage has been done. They probably have more to loose by commenting than not. Right now they need to focus on blowing us away in May / E3. Otherwise they are screwed. I don't have a good feeling about MS this time around though. If this thing bombs though together with Windows 8 sucking and the tablets not doing so well... MS could be in really bad shape!
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Kotaku's reporting that it is absolutely confirmed that you will not be able to play Xbox games without an internet connection.
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how are they even going to bring this to market if Sony is beating them point for point on everything. I mean it would make more sense to push it to 2014 and retool it.
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Either they have something big that hasn't been leaked yet. Or they think that the Xbox brand is enough.
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I'm guessing some sort of exclusivity deal... and not just a game being exclusive...
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Call of Duty... wait for it... exclusive. (Or just substitute any big franchise and add "exclusive" at the end of it.)
I am personally leaning towards PS4 at this rate. But I could definitely see Microsoft shelling out some big bucks to get full exclusive rights to big franchises to try and retain the player base that doesn't know any better. -
I can't help wondering if they're going to end up pulling the same thing Sony did coming from PS2->PS3.
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Because Sony has a legendary ability to fuck things up.
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Hey guys, remember that thing we all shat on Nintendo for because it didn't work as well as we'd have liked?
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Isn't the Wii U bombing pretty hard?
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yes
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Minor comeback? The 3DS is doing pretty well now and has a really solid game library as well. It's possible for the Wii U to end up doing ok if they get enough 1st party stuff out there and continue to have exclusives like Bayonetta 2.
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It seems like it's doing fine. It's the Wii U that's currently giving Nintendo issues
http://m.guardiannews.com/technology/2013/jan/30/nintendo-profit-wiiu-3ds-sales
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they had to do a major, unprecedented course correction to get the sales back on track. The price drop and resulting financial impact (taking a loss per unit sold as never before) represented a serious mischaracterization of the market with their initial product planning. Recent lack of buzz for 3D in general also doesn't prove helpful to the 3DS (which is not to say I think it's useless or never done well). And with that said, there's still no denying how much increased competition they face from smartphones and tablets, in terms of getting people to justify the initial hardware cost (and inconvenience of another device to carry), getting people to pay software prices with nice royalty rates for Nintendo, and other features they lack (namely cellular data).
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Seems like the course correction worked.
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It's having a troubled first year, no getting around that.
I'm just saying, I remember Nintendo taking a lot of shit for how poorly BC and the Wii shell were integrated into the overall experience. Not that it isn't poorly implemented, mind you, it's a pain in the ass, but it works.
Now, Sony has already pulled the plug on BC, and rumor is MS is gonna have to do the same. Kind of puts Nintendo's janky solution into perspective.
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man they are just really selling this well
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It doesn't sound like a very attractive system, at least not compared to the PS4.
They will need *something* to make it more appealing.
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Well, if the PS4 doesn't have BC, and the NextBox doesn't, that answers it for me - no future consoles, just a continual migration to a gaming PC I stick in the living room.
I'm sick and tired of investing in ecosystems that punish you later when you want to stay within what a company offers.
I can run old games from 20 years ago on my PC, and still be happy - and still do.
The one saving grace there might be, if no hardware BC, is this: Let me stick the disk in, have them identify the game, and give me an electronic/digital version I can play (streamed or not) on the new platform.
Otherwise, there just isn't any interest for me in future consoles. I'm sick of being burnt!-
it's funny how we went from never having BC to being disappointed if it doesn't have it.
Weren't there a lot of articles about parents being upset the Super NES couldn't play the NES games?-
The thing is it wasn't too hard to keep your NES and SNES hooked up at the same time...but hooking up 5-6 or more systems to a single TV becomes a major pain in the ass for most people and when you're selling as many games as MS or Sony are on their systems do you really want to be telling people "these are going to either be worthless for you soon or a huge pain in the ass to use...buy up folks!"
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Probably.
For me, its because its more popular and mainstream. Generations have gotten longer, game libraries larger, and people expect more.
At this point, there will be a non-trivial number of people who have invested multiple thousands of dollars into things. Asking people to do this over and over again and giving them no avenue to keep that investment is a lot to ask. -
For a lot of people I'm sure it's the costs involved. You spend how much over the life of a console buying games and then the new one comes out and all those games won't play on it. Yes, you can keep the PS2, PS3, XBOX, XBOX 360, Wii hooked up to play your library but it's starting to get more than a little crazy. *crosses fingers my PS3 launch fatty will keep working*
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I really don't see how comparing the way people bought games 20+ years ago, when the industry (and technology in general) was very different, to now, makes any sense.
We live now in a world where you can buy something on say, the Apple store, and it'll work on every iPhone you own from now until the entire line gets discontinued. On a PC, barring some issues, you can run every game you've bought on Steam.
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Ok, back to the PC for you then. Gotta show em with your wallet.
But There are plenty of people who dont feel this way. One of them being me.
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This is MS's way of telling me not to buy any more 360 games from now on.
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the original Xbox was x86, the 360 was not
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Excellent, no reason to buy it, then.
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Sony didn't start the rumors dummy.
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It will be the RT style platform explicitly so Steam cannot run on it.
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Hardly matters to me, I don't want any concessions made to support legacy stuff. Nintendo did silly things with memory on the Wii for GameCube support.
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I currently have a 360. What this announcement has made me realize is that I will be getting a PS4 for sure. The PS4 will work when the internet goes down (not that often), will be 'backward compatible', may not require a LIVE type service to access Netflix, and is rumoured to have more powerful hardware. The backwards compatibility (Gaikai tech) will actually be quite valuable because it will enable me to finally access all the PS3 exclusives that I've been keen to play for the past few years (uncharted series and Journey for examples) but also allow access to the newest next gen titles. In the short term, I'm sure that there will be xbox versions of most new Microsoft exclusives, so I won't miss out on those either.
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This is what fanboys actually believe...
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