These contracts aren’t written in blood the fact that they are highly variable means that they can stipulate performance parity and as a customer it’s not really my concern about how difficult upholding the contract may or may not be for these companies that sign a contract with MS with regards to Game pass.
I think you two underestimate the complexity of game development. There is no guarantee of performance so putting a legally binding document on top of it is only asking for trouble. What is MS or a studio supposed to do if a bug introduced late creates stutters or drops? Should they sue the studio? Also keep in mind it’s usually the publishers that determine how long they are willing to pay for the development and are also the ones signing the gamepass deals.
Providing the best tools and dev support possible is what MS should be doing to better ensure developers can best utilize the hardware. They are continuously working on these goals so I’m not what more they can do.
Wow that is awesome. Hopefully they don’t remove that hidden feature.
Yeah, this just isn’t good. Just see that video thingy in the clip, wtf!
Frame drops is one thing, but that? Come on.
recent bug break it? I never had any of those issues pre-release
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The new narrative: Game Pass goes to competitor for better performance. If exclusive, effort is limited.
And this is why I’m very selective on who I take the word of from Twitter. Makes no sense for video files to be outright missing. With every version experiencing bugs in some form, the more likely reason for the videos not playing is a bug.
It’s unfortunate that the game launched the way it did but that’s how it goes these days…sadly. However I’m willing to give them, or any studio a chance to fix what’s wrong before acting like they purposely neglected a version I may prefer.
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omg this thing gonna make xbox loses sales, jokes aside this thing can be fixed with patch even the performance, is a first game of Mundfish they release obviously happen errors.
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Hmm, I see. So one of the three patches must have messed that up. And performance was better for you too?
Why do so many games still have performance issues on Series X compared to PS5? It’s the superior hardware by a small but decent margin so I don’t understand why it keeps happening, I understood at launch when Xbox tools weren’t as good but it’s been over 2 years now come on. Series X has better hardware so I don’t think it should have parity with PS5 or obviously worse results, it should be better, and I don’t mean 4K on Series X while it’s 1440P on PS5 but Hitman 3 for example, that was perhaps the most realistic result so far this generation, native 4k on Series X, DRS on PS5 with a resolution around 1800P iirc, besides one small area it was a perfect 60FPS on Series X, it seemed like the devs put in the effort in that game to get the most out of Series X, something I think should be happening more often than not, tired of the goddamn Ls on hardware I know is superior.
Xbox is already losing sales badly as it is…
I want to discuss a few things and I feel this is the right thread for it. I know that folks in here are in the know about these things.
1- On the subject of Series S. A year or two ago there was a tweet by one dev and he claimed many other devs were with him on the fact that S was a problem. We never heard from any of these devs though. Why would a dev do this?
But also, have we had devs actually stating the opposite of this, debunking that claim? Obviously we’ve had lots of games now ever since this console generation started and they run fine on S, so I can’t help but wonder how much of a problem it genuinely is, if at all. Have devs praised the S or at least just said it’s not a big hassle at all?
2 - Do YOU think S makes for extra hassles and a headache for devs in general, or is porting from X to S pretty simple and not a problem? Since the BG3 thing it sure has become a talking point again. But S holding back X…does that make any sense when much weaker PC hardware can run these games fine? If S is a problem, why aren’t weaker PC hardware then? Switch?
3 - On the subject of Larian with BG3. I see sites and people on Twitter especially jumping to the conclusion that these issues with split-screen are causes by S. All I saw was Larian saying they have a hard time right now getting split-screen working for X and S. Now if S is the problem, I’m not sure they’d outright say that, but can’t it easily be something else? I honestly just don’t get it. Don’t pc’s with weaker hardware than S run BG3 fine?
But in these cases that for some reason the devs has problems with Xbox, I just hope MS sends a team to help out. Similar to how Sony sent a team to SDS to help with the PS5 version of Callisto Protocol.
4 - This november we’ll be three years into the current generation, among games that run either on par with PS5, run better than PS5 there’s also still cases where they aren’t on par and actually worse, often only in the performance areas. We can keep saying pandemic etc, but that can’t be the only thing. And obviously PS5 (sadly) is often prioritized, but I also see folks saying it’s because of S, it’s extra work, an extra annoyance for devs and they don’t always choose to optimize it. Meaning X gets “left behind” since S isn’t being bothered with after launch.
But should that even be a worry at all? Do devs first look at S and then X?
But I’d like to believe that’s not true. I’d like to believe that Avalanche for example will iron out the fps issues in Hogwarts. I mean look at Capcom, they sure did for MHR. CDPR with Cyberpunk 2077 where unless I’m wrong, that’s the better version now, XSX. But then there’s Witcher 3 too with the draw distance issue. It just sucks that it sure seems like Xbox is being treated as a second class passenger on a train compared to PS as first class.
I think that’s about it. Your thoughts?
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My thoughts are too much attention is placed on items that don’t matter in the least. Stop caring about how performance on other systems are. Go play and enjoy your games.
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Phil Spencer himself said games on Series S take extra work but it’s quite obvious it takes some extra work with no one saying it just by looking at the specs, memory being probably the biggest issue.
I’ve been thinking, but was afraid people here would take it in a bad way so never posted it, that maybe Starfield is taking so long and they’re being so quiet about it because of issues with the Series S version, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it has some bad performance issues on Series S and it will require some good extra months of development to release it on a good state on Series S, Series S also makes up 50%+ of Series sales so Xbox themselves can’t just slap a half arsed port and call it a day like some 3rd parties do.
Hmm, I was hoping you’d shed some insight on this. I don’t agree that it doesn’t matter though, definitely think it does. You buy the better system and you expect and hope the games to run the best or at least be on par. And with many games that is the case too, but there are still cases where it isn’t. It feels like lately the games underperforming have increased compared to last year, I don’t like that.
And now with Larian and BG3 I would say it definitely matters. We don’t know exactly why the studio has these issues with X/S, but it’s certainly not what you want to hear as primarily a Xbox user. I’d rather discuss these things here than on Twitter where fools are being assholes with “it’s the tools”, I don’t want to mingle with such immaturity.
And besides, ultimately this IS the tech analysis thread. 
The thought has crossed my mind, but at the same time there are many other reasons why it could have taken them so long. Pandemic, brand new IP, larger than any of their other games, their engine. And them wanting to bring the most polished BGS title to date.
As for BG3, whatever is going on…if S ends up being the issue and it can’t work for them, then I hope MS would be OK if Larian wants to exclude S for the game. I doubt it would go that far though.
Don’t ever become a PC gamer with that mentality then. There will always be some better platform/build out there than the one you own.
At some point you have step away from it and realize its just games for entertainment, its not some life hanging in the balance competition.
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PC gaming I’ve given up many years ago. But I can’t deny that I like it when I read that my console of choice has the edge in the games I like. I definitely get it that there will always be games that have the edge on PS and vice versa, just feels to me(but i could be wrong) that lately games having the edge on PS5 are increasing. It’s tricky I guess, because look at Cyberpunk, eventually X became the best version because of patches. I’d just like to see that for Hogwarts too and hope AH gets patched so it will be mostly smooth again.
All in all I’m just hoping it isn’t indeed increasing.
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Supposedly there was another patch released 16GB worth just recently.
after that I’m gonna pardon mort for being doom poster lmao
losing badly how? like the e3 2013 fiasco? also why the care the version of ps5? only consoles warriors care about that.
The ideal would be to see SX having better versions of every game since it is the more powerful system but there were lackluster Xbox versions even in the OG Xbox days were the power delta was much much bigger than it is now. The most powerful system getting worse versions than expected is not a new thing and it will not magically stop now, devs prioritizing certain platforms (for a lot of different reasons that have being discussed to death here) is a thing and we have to deal with it.
A few more frame drops here and there or a higher res reflection won’t affect the experience of a game. Xbox/Game Pass and even 3rd parties are crazy good so far this year (and it’s going to get even better) with some awesome games available to us so just play some games, have fun with them and stop (over)thinking in digital foundry terms.
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All we need to know is that the same devs are probably working for a studio that’s going to do a Steam deck version of the game. But they won’t complain about the extra work because it’s not complaining about Microsoft.