Xbox E3

[danbish]

My God, why is everyone who speaks on that stage so bloody boring? They all say the same things in that same tones - I'm becoming suicidal here.

[Garf]

That entire tomb raider trailer was just a straight line, god damn

[Edd]

Tomb Raider will be cool if it's anything like the first one but the demo wasn't the best. Also it's coming out the same day as Fallout 4 so lol, rip Tomb Raider.

[jimbob555]

impressed with the effort they have gone to to show the vr stuff with minecraft

[OrangeRakoon]

I really, reaally want Hololens.

This is the best Microsoft conference as far back as I can remember. Rare hype - Xbone is worth it for that collection alone.

[jimbob555]

i was right about his t-shirt

[Kesskuron]

I really, reaally want Hololens.

First thing I thought when I saw that was rollercoaster tycoon

[Cribs]

mobas tho

[jimbob555]

why has gigantic got to be a moba :'(

fable legends is looking a lot more like a moba now as well

[Garf]

well that was a lot of nothing

[barrybarryk]

Backwards compatibility is cool, shame it's pre-approved titles only but I guess there's a ton of boring licensing stuff involved. The Rare collection has been a long time coming too.

I guess backwards compatibility isn't backwards anymore MS.

[bort]

i missed the bit with hololens but it doesnt seem like affordable technology atm anyway? not sure whether to invest interest in it until the future

other than that it felt like they were focusing on bringing up the past with backwards compat/ and rare collection (even if its super well priced), and nothing new thats outstanding or exclusive

ALSO isnt the backwards compatability thing just going to be exactly what they originally intended to do with xbox one titles before there was a whole uproar about it, like you put the disk in, download the title and then the games on your system
feels like theyre just pushing what they wanted all along

[Kesskuron]

I was thinking that bort
Can't remember how they worded it but I seem to recall they said load the disc and then download the game
Am I getting that right?
Cos if that's how it works then it's eton mess

[beansontoast]

Damn the style for this game though

[OrangeRakoon]

Well in that case I am considerably less sold. Don't announce backwards compatibility if it's not backwards compatibility.

[barrybarryk]

They didn't really go into detail about it, but I could see it just meaning you'll need the disc on the drive to play it, and maybe a small download for an emulator profile per title. Which is hardly surprising, 360 game discs aren't unique, there's no way they can stop you giving the disc to a buddy after having played it on your X1 and letting them play it on their X1.

[breezyskells]

got my wish of a Forza 6 date plus now a Halo 5 date so I have some saving up to do,

[RichardUK]

im really looking forward to Forza 6

[Bix]

So before I bother catching up with this (as I missed it ), was there any Scalebound ? If not I'm not sure I'll bother.

[Edd]

Yes there was lots of Scalebound.

heh heh

[DarkRula]

Don't listen to the scoundrel. There was none.
Though they did say it would be at Gamescom.

[danbish]

Backwards compatibility is cool, shame it's pre-approved titles only but I guess there's a ton of boring licensing stuff involved. The Rare collection has been a long time coming too.

I guess backwards compatibility isn't backwards anymore MS.

Well in that case I am considerably less sold. Don't announce backwards compatibility if it's not backwards compatibility.

I really don't believe both Microsoft and the Xbox fans for this - not all just the more fanboy ones.

Just before the 360 was launched we were told that it wouldn't be backwards compatible with Xbox games (because that's not what gamers want, wrong!) and there was outcry at the time. Fast forward a few years later and MS proudly proclaimed that the 360 would be backwards compatible with Xbox titles, "rejoice and finally, took them long enough!" was the words they shouted but alas, only a handful of them would be backwards compatible. Kinda took the edge off the announcement.

Nearly seven years later, out comes XBOne with the announcement that it won't be backwards compatible with 360 games because "backwards compatibility isn't what the people want", even though they'd been wanting for it for as long as XBO was first announced. Then BAM! E3 last night and the same 'news' is given with the same stipulation and suddenly its great again. Seriously? I don't know who to slap first - Microsoft for playing the same trick twice or the gullible public for falling for it again.

Bottom line is that the XBOne should have been backwards compatible out of the box. I don't know one person who thinks its a good idea they cant play their 360 games on their new console and a few of those have been well and truly gutted once that realisation sinks in. The excuse that the XBO has different architecture than the 360 is not a fully acceptable answer as it could have been done had MS really wanted to instead of telling the public 'this is what you want'. All they needed to do was include an official 360 operating system ROM to allow it - WiiU does, it has a Wii built into it and the same story with Wii>GameCube.

Its really not the revelation the Xbox fans or corporate bigwigs think it is.

[barrybarryk]

I'd like all consoles to be backwards compatible, and deliberately designed to make that so but I also have worked on lots of emulators and know just how ridiculously complicated they can be to get right (especially when developers deliberately ignore every single piece of documentation and best practice guidelines to exploit hardware bugs and turn them into game features) and then you also have it being a service a tiny proportion of the user base will actually use. I remember seeing Sony backwards compatibility metadata a few years ago and it was along the lines of less than 8% of PS3 owners used backwards compatibility at all, even once.

When it comes to digital titles though I think it's very different, no one has to trawl through eBay and second hand racks for old games.

The excuse that the XBO has different architecture than the 360 is not a fully acceptable answer as it could have been done had MS really wanted to instead of telling the public 'this is what you want'. All they needed to do was include an official 360 operating system ROM to allow it

Wether you think that's an acceptable answer or not is irrelevant, it's a solid, indisputable fact that the 360 and xbone have completely different architectures. And no "All they needed to do was include an official 360 operating system ROM to allow it", this isn't even remotely how that works.

If you want to guess at the technical side of enabling it, they probably had their Hyper-V team work with IBM (who own the CPU from the 360) on a whole new hypervisor/hardware abstraction layer, that certainly won't have been cheap or trivial. Not that it matters that much, MS have more money than God, but it's worth remembering it's for a feature that will never make a penny and most won't use but it will generate loads of goodwill with the press and the 'hardcore' consumers.

The Wii U on the other hand has backwards compatibility because the hardware was specifically designed for it. The CPU they use isn't just the same architecture as the Wii and Gamecube, it's the exact same family and has a compatibility mode built right in. Nintendo were even so lazy that they didn't fix the Wii firmware for the peripheral Wii U hardware or even fix the exploits.

I don't like MS, actually I flat out think Microsoft's Xbox Division should just go away completely, but there's absolutely no downside to MS announcing free backwards compatibility and there is no way whatsoever it was easy to implement. I just hope they don't screw it up.

[Ruari]

I must be the only one who not only loved the Xbox conference, but thought it was the best show at E3 this year.

[OrangeRakoon]

Yes you are