"In the past, some people have said 'why bother with such a focus on back-compat? Who's actually using it?' Well, for starters, simply is, principle, for the sake of preservation, I applaud Microsoft's efforts. And secondly, with the arrival of Game Pass, there's an audience of millions who will have access to a range of titles from across the generation. Therefore, backwards compatibility obviously matters."
Xbox Official Xbox thread
- Thread starter Vulcan
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"In the past, some people have said 'why bother with such a focus on back-compat? Who's actually using it?' Well, for starters, simply is, principle, for the sake of preservation, I applaud Microsoft's efforts. And secondly, with the arrival of Game Pass, there's an audience of millions who will have access to a range of titles from across the generation. Therefore, backwards compatibility obviously matters."
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"As a result, at a bare minimum, Xbox Series consoles should retain three to four "next-gen" game save states for the sake of Xbox Quick Resume—though, thanks to my back-compat limits, I've been unable to test this claim as of press time.
Instead, I've pushed my tester Xbox Series X console with a mix of XB1, X360, and OGX content to test how many save states I can cram into the console's internal memory before the feature stops working. My average result has been 12 games. Meaning, I can manually load 12 games, then go back in order to reload each of the dozen, and they'll each have a brief "Quick Resume" tag appear on the screen before reappearing in fully playable, middle-of-the-game action within five to 12 seconds."
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/xbox-series-x-hands-on-the-big-back-compat-dive-begins/
Instead, I've pushed my tester Xbox Series X console with a mix of XB1, X360, and OGX content to test how many save states I can cram into the console's internal memory before the feature stops working. My average result has been 12 games. Meaning, I can manually load 12 games, then go back in order to reload each of the dozen, and they'll each have a brief "Quick Resume" tag appear on the screen before reappearing in fully playable, middle-of-the-game action within five to 12 seconds."
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/xbox-series-x-hands-on-the-big-back-compat-dive-begins/
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Holy fuck.
Fuck I truly hope the PS5 can accomplish something like that. Imagine BB at that FPS....
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I think BB is locked at 30 FPS. There's also a frame pacing issue with that game as well it's not just the FPS.
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Fuck, still near instant load times with BB would still be a treat.
A BB patch for 60fps at 4k would be special.
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Yea hopefully Sony takes some time and patches the game. Throw some interns on it or something I don't know.
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Surprised at how long the load times are, tbh. 15 seconds for Cuphead lolhttps://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/xbox-series-x-hands-on-the-big-back-compat-dive-begins/
All loading times in these charts measure from the instant I press "A" to load a game until I reach the latest default save file. None of these games has received "next-gen" patches just yet.
This is from the console menu all the way until your game save loads. Not sure how much faster you can even expect Cuphead to load when there's still logo screens it forces you to go through.
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So from the main XBox menu, you click the icon and it automatically loads the saved game, or does it go through the logos/menus/etc. ?
Ya, this test was showing how long it would take to open the game from the menu and get into your loaded save, it would have to go through the forced logo and menu screens.
Some of the other graphs posted above shows normal time comparisons from the game menu.
Then there's a quick resume feature that let's you just about instantly get into the games you already got open.
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Ah, ok. With logos/menus/etc, that's much better
I figured it was straight Xbox menu to saved game.
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As Swing said, it depends on where the load is, they're not all uniform, but generally speaking, that sounds like it's in line with PCs, now.
Open world gaming on consoles is finally playable.
Those are cold loads of the game. That's launching the game from the menu for the first time since booting up the system. Those are cool to know, but less practical. The loads that really really consume gaming time are relaunches after death, fast travels, new levels, that sort of thing.
Ah, ok. With logos/menus/etc, that's much better
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Has MS or could MS for any reason decide at any point to not put a first party game on game pass? Like the next Elder Scrolls, could they just say sorry but that will be $70, know its going to sell 10s of millions of copies?
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Could they? Of course. Would they? Almost certainly not, they would look like total fucking hypocrites and liars.
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They have come out and said all first party games will be day 1 game pass I'm pretty sure. I could be wrong though. I guess technically they could go back on that but I wouldn't see the point in doing that. Seeing as how trying to get a quick cash grab on elder scrolls is most likely less important to them than building up game pass.
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I wouldn't suspect that they would do it but i didn't know if it had already happened (not sure they've had a first party game that lucrative) nor would I put it past video game execs to do something like that
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Agreed, there's no way in hell they don't put those games on Game Pass, Day 1.
They don't because it would be bad business. The number of sign-ups who maintain a subscription on Game Pass for a single game will vastly exceed the revenue over even a relatively short period.
Skyrim sold 13.7m copies on the Xbox 360. Apparently some ~4.2m copies sold on the PC. That's nearly 18m. Not all of these were sold in the first year, but the user market has only been growing.
So let's say 15m of TES:VI sells on the XSX/XB1 and PC platforms in the first year. If that were pure retail we're talking about $1.05bn revenue.
Let's say half of these are gamers who opt to subscribe to the Game Pass service to play the game: 7.5m. Why wouldn't they? That's so attractive. You can pay $70 to buy it, or can pay as low as $10/mo per month to play it. Many gamers are probably thinking they'll be done playing it after several months. Furthermore, the vast majority of Xbox gamers will be thinking, "I already pay $10/mo for Xbox Live, so upgrading to GPU is really just a $5/mo premium for me. At that effective cost, I could subscribe for 14 months before I'd equaled the cost of buying the game."
We'll assume the majority go for this Game Pass Ultimate value because it's cheaper for Xbox users to get that service for the Xbox Live inclusion than to buy Xbox Live + Game Pass Xbox separately. Xbox users also make up the majority of buyers, obviously. Let's assume 75% are Ultimate subscribers ($15/mo), and 25% are lesser PC or Xbox subscribers ($10/mo). Not everyone will be paying the retail subscription rate, but let's assume they do for simplicity's sake.
How many do you think burn through the game in a single month, and immediately drop the service? Probably not many. Meanwhile, you might assume that 10% keep the service indefinitely after subscribing. That 10% are going to yield $10m/revenue a month in perpetuity, or $120m per year. The other 90% will yield $90m in the first month, and every month thereafter, or a rate of $1.08bn per year. Altogether, we're assuming this 7.5m subscriber base is yielding $100m/mo.
Keep in mind we're just assuming half the base went with Game Pass. They've already netted $525m from standalone sales, so the target for comparison is the opportunity cost of $525m. That means that six months membership across the entire base will yield +$75m revenue. Even if many don't like the game, or don't go out to six months, you have that 10% you retain will themselves produce more revenue after 4 1/2 years.
Even if you factor in the wisdom of the consumer, which is that Microsoft would have been netting Xbox Live revenues from most of those users, anyway, you can see why corporations are crazy about subscription services. It's perpetual income. It's a never-ending river of money.
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@Dizzy @SaiWa this article LecherBear posted about load times has an interesting tidbit hidden in it (or purposely ignored
) but it says Xbox limited the backwards compatibility to a 1000 games across all gens and has left out some huge unnamed hits. But I thought they said ".......read my lips.....FULL backwards compatibility across all gens and every game ever !”
What gives ?
