Microsoft To Unify PC and Xbox One Platforms (theguardian.com)

New submitter Serzen writes: According to The Guardian, Microsoft is planning to end fixed console hardware for the Xbox One as a move towards one ecosystem running Unified Windows Applications. The head of the company's Xbox division, Phil Spencer, said that the Universal Windows Platform would be central to the company's gaming strategy. "That is our focus going forward," he told reporters. "Building out a complete gaming ecosystem for Universal Windows Applications." What this could mean is that the Xbox One becomes more like a PC, with Microsoft releasing updated versions at regular intervals with more powerful processors and graphics hardware. In theory, because games will be written as UWAs, older titles will remain compatible with the new machines.

Comments

Then why get a console?

[goose-incarnated]

If your PC can run everything that the console can, why bother with the console?

Re:Then why get a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

If your PC can run everything that the console can, why bother with the console?

Cost.

Consoles usually represent good value for the processing they provide at time of release.

Re:Then why get a console?

[antek9]

It obviously doesn't occur to them that lots of former PC gamers turned to consoles specifically to get away from yearly hardware upgrades. This is a very anti-console move by Microsoft, indeed.

It might be good news for Sony, at least in the short term, but I'm afraid it's bad news for most console gamers.

Re:Then why get a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly, I have noted in the past decade that the requirement for constant upgrades is becoming less excessive. Sure, I'm not running things on the highest settings but I certainly get to play and get to play with pretty shiny pixels.

Re:Then why get a console?

[Stormwatch]

Consoles usually represent good value for the processing they provide at time of release.

That was the case with the Xbox 360, which had a triple-core PowerPC back when x86 PCs were still on single-core Pentium 4. Not so much with the current generation consoles, that were kind of "meh" from the start.

Re:Then why get a console?

[DrXym]

The flip side is that whatever you save by going to consoles you lose by paying through the nose for the same game. And certain kinds of games simply don't travel well to consoles.

Re:Then why get a console?

[Tukz]

Because most games are optimized for console and ported for PC, thus the PC requirements are lower.

Re:Then why get a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure bullshit. You don't need yearly hardware upgrades to get a PC gaming experience that blows consoles out of the water. That's a common misconception propagated by console users. That might have been true a decade ago, but not anymore. In addition, most of the gamers I know, including myself, moved away from consoles entirely.

Re:Then why get a console?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also something of a hardware apex in current hardware architectures. When was the last hardware update that didn't scale out instead of up? The last CPU I bought had the exact same clock speed as the one I bought 5 years earlier, just with more cores. My graphics card? Still rocking GDDR5 with the same bud speed from a decade ago but cuda/shader core count has sky rocketed.

Moore's law was nice while it lastest...

Re:Then why get a console?

[AmiMoJo]

There is also the issue of console and PC players in the same game online. Having a mouse in a first person shooter usually grants a huge advantage. Are they going to enforce gamepad use, require the game to run at the same locked frame rate as the console, at the same low resolution etc?

Steam Competition

[nateman1352]

Looks like the fact that Valve largely controls PC gaming and is doing everything they can to push it away from Microsoft's platform has earned them Microsoft's perceived #1 gaming competitor. Make no mistake, Microsoft knows that gaming is one of the few remaining compelling reasons for consumers to use their platform. Most (but not all) desktop application use cases can be accomplished with a web browser these days. Microsoft knows that if they don't create a reason for game devs to use DirectX 12 then there is a risk that game devs will prefer Vulkan due to the multi-platform targeting (Windows, SteamOS, Android) which will erode the position of Windows as the best PC gaming platform.

Basically this is Microsoft saying that they don't care very much about Sony anymore, they perceive Valve as a greater threat and they are willing to give up the hardware sales that XBox exclusive titles would normally drive to instead incentivize continued purchase of Windows licenses for gaming PCs. It would not surprise me if Microsoft starts licensing the XBox brand the same way Steam Machines are licensed. We could see an "Alienware Xbox" sometime soon.

Another interpretation

[RogueyWon]

I'm toying with another possible interpretation of this; that this is effectively MS's way of getting out of the console market, but without the "big bang" announcement that saw Sega ditch things what should have been half-way through the Dreamcast's life-cycle.

There's not much detail out there yet, but based on what there is, it sounds like MS are planning to release what are basically cheap, locked-down PCs on a rolling basis, similar to the Steam Machines. As with those Steam machines, anything which is playable on them will also be playable on a full-sized PC. This is a long-way removed from the traditional console model, where a machine is sent out to sit in the market for anywhere from 4 to 8 years with no hardware changes and where the console-manufacturer funds exclusive titles to grow the installed base (then creams revenue off the third-party titles via licensing fees). In essence, it is just a slightly different type of PC, which sits under your TV (and yes, I know the PS4 and XB1 already resemble that description to a degree, but they were both sold on the "static hardware" model).

It's pretty clear why MS might go in this direction. Their long-standing cash-cows are Windows and Office. Xbox has been a side-line and, in some respects, a slightly risky one, in that it has toyed with undermining one of the key sales-points of Windows (gaming). It was always a sideline which only a company which was very, very confident in its continued monopoly position in its main market (and the continued health of that market) could afford to pursue.

And right now, while that monopoly still looks fairly strong, there are signs of stress; tablets (mostly non-MS ones) have convinced a lot of people to give up their laptops. Ten years ago, Linux was, in essence, NeckbeardOS with no real chance of displacing Windows in the home environment. Now you have Valve and other reasonably serious players throwing a lot of weight behind Linux-powered devices. Win8 flopped and while Win10 is doing better, it isn't doing as well as you might expect given it's basically free. MS still dominate the PC OS market, but it's an increasingly vulnerable domination of an increasingly vulnerable market. Re-emphasizing the Windows PC (be it a laptop, desktop, tablet or box that sits under the TV) as a gaming platform may well be a sensible defensive strategy.

Phil Spencer is, unlike his immediate predecessor, no fool. If he thinks for a moment that what's needed to maintain the health of the Windows cash-cow is to sacrifice the Xbox console strategy on the altar of PC gaming, he will do so in a heart-beat and that, I think, is what we're starting to see happening. Previously-announced Xbox-exclusive series have been announced for PC (albeit Windows 10, and sometimes Windows Store-only) and in some cases are already available.

This shouldn't be a surprise. The Xbox One is a moderately successful console, despite the bad publicity, but MS has no real interest in having a moderately successful console. Don Mattrick's strategy was to use the Xbox One as a doorway for MS to get a presence in every living-room in the country through an all-singing-all-dancing multimedia box, that just happened to also be a games console. That strategy was inane and failed. Spencer has turned the disaster around by refocusing the console in the short term as a traditional console, but it is still only putting out reasonably good numbers and MS have bled market-share to Sony. I just don't see why they'd be excited about staying in that market.

Re:Great

[AuMatar]

And 90% of the devs won't do that, because they're targetting the Xbox. Then they'll decide they can just release it to PC too and do so without adding those settings, because they cost time and money. As proof, I show you every other shitty PC port ever made.

Re:Great

[BitZtream]

I have a PC, I don't game on it because of EXACTLY that! When I play online games, I'm not evenly matched because my PC simply isn't fast enough, which makes crap play for me and everyone else, so I use a console.

Now what they're saying is that my nice 'its going to be the same hardware fro 8-10 years' console is going to be just another PC ... but worse still an extremely locked down PC?

I knew I should have bought a PS4, but after having 3 PS2s die on me and the Sony rootkit episode and all the other shit they pull I just couldn't force myself to do it. Now basically there are no valid consoles for me to own :( Nintendo seems to be stuck thinking N64 graphics are still the target :(

Re: Great

[dave420]

It runs great on the PS4...

Submitter is far too optimistic

[GrumpySteen]

What this could mean is that the Xbox One becomes more like a PC

Yes, but it could also mean that the PC becomes more like the Xbox one with advertisements cluttering up a dashboard. In fact, they've already started showing ads in the menu.

It's more than a little cluelessly optimistic to think that MS will suddenly reverse course and make the Xbox more like the PC. Get ready to have the Xbox dashboard shoved down your throat.

Re:Great

[nmb3000]

Just what PC gamers need - games targeted at low end hardware so it will run on a console.

Not necessarily. There's this thing called 'settings' in most games. You know, like higher resolution/quality graphics, physics, etc...

Tell me, does that "Setting" thing:

- Enable graphical features that the devs left out because the console hardware couldn't support it?
- Fix retarded user interfaces that were designed as 10-foot interfaces so they're clumsy and don't show any details?
- Fix retarded control schemes built for a console's gamepad and shoehorned into a keyboard + mouse interface?
- Make levels larger with few or zero loading screens?
- Remove an engine-enforced frame limiter set to 30fps to prevent frameskips and tearing?
- Gracefully support resolutions larger than the average 1080p (or god forbid, 720p) television?

For any benefits they may have, the simple fact is that consoles ruin games for PCs. It used to be that a game was built for the PC and then ported to a console -- starting with a whole cloth and then cutting out pieces that don't fit. Turning that around just means a worse experience for everyone.