Topic: Official Push Square Xbox Thread

@NecuVise Oh I must have missed that. I heard that 4 was coming in October I think it was but I didn't know the others were. I didn't see any in July's list of games coming to Game Pass but maybe I will hold off on getting it now.

@Tasuki read my edit part

@NecuVise Yeah I caught that, we must haves posted at the same time so I only saw your original response.

@BAMozzy I agree it’s a poor month for GwG with the exception of Splinter Cell but I bought that the day it became backward compatible and it was on sale, I’ve noticed that lately when a game becomes BC it’s on sale for a week, usually at more than 50% off.

@Tasuki I’d definitely recommend FH3 despite FH4 coming out in October because it has great dlc with Hot Wheels and Blizzard Mountain, both of which are different to the vanilla game, plus it really cheap now it’s been out for awhile.

@MaccaMUFC It makes sense to at least try and get any last purchases on games by dropping their price before adding them in as a 'free' game. You aren't going to get many sales after that - other than from those who missed the GwG or not Gold owners. As annoying as it is for us customers who may of recently bought in those sales, if I was running a business, I too would have a final push on selling things before giving them away free.

If MS think that I am going to be tempted by Game Pass with the continuously 'poor' offerings with GwG, they are mistaken. It does feel like they have cut back on the type of games they are offering since they introduced their 'new' release exclusives to Game Pass...

Does Game Pass work on PC? I have no plans to buy an X-Box but if I can sign up and play some games on PC I might consider it.

@Splat according to the official FAQ on the XBOX site it's XB1 only

Started playing Bayonetta tonight and I will say I am having a blast playing it. Never got around to playing it but now I am glad I did.

@Tasuki I quite enjoyed Bayonetta. Its not a game type I particularly enjoy so wouldn't rave about it like some do but its not a bad game in its genre. Its a shame that 2 and 3 will be on Nintendo only but at least us on the X do get to play the very best console version with a virtually locked 60fps performance - you have to commend MS for their implementation of BC and their efforts to enhance old games. You can clearly see they developed the X with BC in mind too with the 12x Anisotropic Filtering baked in at a hardware level.

@BAMozzy It's not a big deal to me that 2 and 3 are on Nintendo systems since I own a Switch. Honestly I would play the first one on Switch but I haven't bought the games yet and I happen to have it on the 360 because of the Games with Gold.

@Tasuki That's cool - at least now you know what the game is (if you didn't before) and maybe influence your decision to buy the others - is 3 out yet? Its still disappointing though for all those 'fans' of the original who don't want or can't justify buying a Switch.

Like I said though, its not a genre of game I am particularly keen on so I don't rave about it as some do but I still think it was OK - especially for free on GwG but I wouldn't buy it, or the sequels myself. I am not a fan of DmC either but I would probably add them if any were given away on PS+/GwG.

So, hadn't really played Xbox a lot lately but decided to drop $10 for a month of Game Pass, just to see what it's all about. I can safely say, if the future of Xbox is iterative consoles, say every four years like the case with Xbox One X, and you get games through Game Pass, I'm all on board for that. I like buying physical copies of games and supporting devs, but Game Pass is just a terrific value and I'd still support devs through buying a digital copy if I like a certain game enough.

@Gamer83 Yeah, the game pass is a great value. The only game I bought for my Xbox is Rare Replay the rest I just play from the Game Pass.

@Tasuki
I've got a fair bit more than that, but yeah, I think I'll be getting most games through Game Pass, at least until the next Xbox arrives. I'm interested to see how MS is going to play this. Could be more 'traditional' could be more PC like.

@Gamer83 Right, with having a PS4 I am only really interested in the Xbox exclusives so that's one thing that's great with the Game Pass.

@Gamer83 I do think the next Xbox will be more PC in a few ways but still a 'traditional' console too. I don't think MS will outright lock the X to the current gen like Sony have with the Pro and the next 'console' is a 'clean' break as that isn't the words we are hearing from MS. I still think that they will bring the next box as almost an iterative upgrade over the X where the X plays games at 30fps and say 1800p but the next box offers 60fps+ - I say + because with HDMI 2.1 they could offer 'up to' 120fps at 4k and with VRR, run smoothly too. If you think how 'easily' Fifa runs at 4k/60, then why not 80, 100 or even 120fps?

Until games that are built specifically to utilise that extra CPU grunt - which could be 3+ yrs down the line as a LOT of devs will still be building games to release on current gen too, then MS could just stop making the S and let that phase out so the X becomes the base and the new Xbox the iterative upgrade with a new 'upgrade' to that planned 3/4yrs down the line when the X can't run the much more CPU intensive software. It can still be a 'hybrid' between a 'new' console and iterative upgrade in that it offers 'unique' games - possibly VR for example with the extra CPU grunt to run at 1440p and high enough frame rates too. This 'fits' with both their 'generation-less' future, their plans to carry your games forward and their statement that they are deep into planning the next 'consoles' - the one that will come out first and the one further down the line with 'upgraded' hardware.

I see a lot of people arguing about not having 'exclusive' launch titles, asking why they would buy a PS5 or Next box if all the games are on PS4/XB1 - well the fact that these next Gen consoles will offer a big performance gain - 60+ fps over the older consoles is one big reason. People bought Pro's and X's more for visual gains and I do recall a lot saying that the Pro should have been built for 60fps minimum first and foremost. With the PS5 of course, you would get next gen features like a 4k Bluray, Atmos, VRR as well as a big leap in performance and visuals - as much - if not more than the PS3 to PS4. After all the PS3 to PS4 went from 720-1080p and the Pro is really a 1440p at best console. Point is though, people will upgrade to play the games at 60 rather than 30fps as well as 4k with better visual settings like textures, draw distances maybe even ray tracing too. I think it makes more sense to release games on all consoles they can rather than artificially limit them to just 1 to sell that system. People will still upgrade because they want to play those games at their 'best' - whether its first party exclusives or 3rd Party games like CoD, BF etc. Talking of CoD, the next CoD (Infinity Wards 2019 CoD) is supposed to be in development for 'Next Gen' consoles too...

@BAMozzy Won’t most games running at 120fps look like as if your playing it on fast forward? It could end up looking ridiculous. When I played The Witcher 3 in 60fps it just didn’t look right to me, everything from the foliage to Geralt’s hair looked like it was moving/blowing in super fast motion, it just didn’t look natural.

What’s next after 4K? 8K? Are we even going to see much/any difference when sitting at a sensible distance from the screen? Even if we got 16K the human eye won’t be able to differentiate it, we only have 20/20 vision thus being limited at what we can see, no matter how big the screen is or how close you sit in front of it. That kind of technology will be so far ahead of itself that it would be useless to us.

@MaccaMUFC it's not only about resolution. We'll be fine with 4K for the foreseeable future, but there are other ways to improve everything. Right now the biggest offender is AI, so I have big expectations for the next Gen regarding AI and physics. There are many other areas besides resolution which can improve and the sole reason why there's such a big focus on resolution is because it is easily marketable due to being connected to TVs. After all, we still don't have real time ray tracing and it's doubtful we'll get it on next gen.

@MaccaMUFC 120fps doesn't change the 'speed' of a game at all but you get more 'frames' in between which smooths out the presentation. The reason it feels 'slicker' at 60fps is because you also have a much better response from the controller. Its most obvious though when you are moving 'fast' as the objects have to move a lot more between one frame and the next at 30fps and so look a bit 'jumpy/jerky' - often motion blur is used to mask this.

If you move say 4m every new frame at 30fps, at 120fps, you only move 1m for every frame so you don't get such the jump. Every second though you will still be moving 120m so not actually moving faster but you are just adding in 'extra' frames in between to make it look much smoother. We don't see in Frames per Second so things move smooth in real life. Its more obvious when you spin round and look at distant objects as they appear to move much greater distances with each new frame.

The Controller response is better too because you are having to wait the 33ms to get the next frame so it all feels much slicker, more responsive, more immediate. Once you get used to playing at 60fps, going back to 30fps feels like your are stuck in mud, heavy and sluggish.

As for resolution, we don't see in 'dots' either and whilst objects that are 'close' to the camera may not benefit too much at 8k or 16k, the benefits are more to distant objects. Take a simple thing as a shop sign that's in the foreground, that's legible and sharp but the more you move away, the smaller that becomes, the few 'pixels' you have per letter and the more 'blurry' it can become - especially those that are made up of curves or diagonals. The fewer pixels you have to draw objects, the more inaccurate the image is and the more inaccurate the colours are. If you have a Black and white striped top for example, depending on how thick those stripes are, at a certain point, the stripes become blurred because the pixels are two big to render both 'black' and 'White' so they merge into a 'grey' at the edges' and eventually, that striped shirt becomes a solid grey. I am not saying it will be a massive benefit - diminishing returns etc but it can add to the realism, add to the accuracy etc. It can be used well in HDR - some fine, sharp bright highlight or pin-prick stars on a dark background will be visible in 8 or even 16k because we see light. If those stars are 'small', they probably missing at 1080p, blurry grey at 4k and not as bright as they should be (an average of the bright white from the star and dark black of the background) and the bright pin prick they should be at 8k. 1 pixel at HD is 4 pixels at 4k or 16 pixels at 8k so you have the potential to have 16x the colour accuracy of 1080p and 4pixels at HD is 64pixels at 8k so you can see how much more accurately colours can be used to give a 'better' picture - even if you can't see too much of a benefit - I think the backgrounds will look better, more natural.

I don't necessarily think its going to be transformative or especially needed in most UK homes with the average sized TV (currently 55") and average seating distance. Those charts are BS - even with 2020 vision and based on seeing individual pixels rather than seeing the effects of not enough pixels (ie the blur when its having to merge multiple colours into 1. I can see 'fur' in real life but on TV that becomes 'blurry' if its not in the foreground because the hair is too fine to be rendered sharply and it doesn't have to be too far from the camera before that starts happening. I can see my cat's whiskers - especially as they are white against a 'darker' colour fur and even more so when they catch the light but on TV - even at 4k, they would disappear as the camera pulls back a bit.

I still think 4k though will be standard for a long time in gaming. The power needed to render that is too expensive and to do that every 33-16.6ms (30-60fps). You not only have to draw in everything, you then have to calculate all lighting, shadows etc too and process that all. We all know the CPU has been the 'weak link' this generation and I expect that we won't see too much of visual boost (unless you are coming from a base PS4/XB1 and seeing 4k for the first time) but you will see a jump in performance. Just going from 30fps to 60fps is going to tax GPU's as they have to draw that image in half the time so whilst we may see a 'jump in GPU' power, on next gen, a lt of that will be used to draw twice as many frames per second. If a PS4 Pro takes 33ms to render a CB4k image, double the GPU would enable it to draw a 'native' 4k image in 33ms or keep the same CB4k image but do it in 16.6ms (60fps). Effectively you would need 4x the GPU to double the resolution and double the frame rate (to keep it simple although in reality its a lot more complex than that). This is why its not likely to be a massive jump in resolution as the power will be needed to draw the frames much quicker.

After playing games on the Xbox One the last.few.weeks to me it seems that games do run better on the Xbox One over the PS4. Mind you I have the base models for both not a pro or an X and I am finding that games overall look better and even run better on the One. Heck even my internet connection seems better on the Xbox One. But as I said I am not sure if it's just me.