Xbox Series X|S Thread - Power Your Dreams.

Anything to do with games at all.
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Moggy
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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Moggy » Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:59 pm

Hime wrote:
Photek wrote:It’s possible I suppose. I presume games in Extenal HD will work or at least require a small patch. Also with Xcloud you can play a game while waiting for it to download in Gamepass.

That's the actual use case I see for streaming. Playing on your phone or whatever is nice but being able to get a stream going while the game downloads is a real quality of life improvement.


My internet is so gooseberry fool that I can barely load a webpage on my phone if the Xbox/PS4 is downloading. I've no chance of streaming a game. :lol:

One day I will have fibre. One day. :datass:

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by jawa4 » Wed Feb 05, 2020 1:11 pm

I suspect that the Series X - and the PS5 - are being developed around using a SSD to provide data delivery boosts to performance. I will be surprised if a HDD could be used by either console; maybe for past-gen game emulation, but not for most new titles.

The cost of SSDs is still problematic in comparison to HDDs. Both consoles will probably ship with small (in comparison to HDD) storage capacity and the companies will try to change gamer mindsets in terms having all your games downloaded at once. The consoles will probably have a port to connect an external SSD to improve storage options but it is likely to take a couple of years before most gamers splash out on such an add-on; a, say, 2TB SSD (in an enhanced, custom format as is reportedly being used by MS and Sony) will be expensive.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by KK » Wed Feb 05, 2020 1:21 pm

Maybe Sony and Microsoft are going to sell more than one version with different SSD sizes at launch.

I hope they do, anyway.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Peter Crisp » Wed Feb 05, 2020 2:29 pm

KK wrote:Maybe Sony and Microsoft are going to sell more than one version with different SSD sizes at launch.

I hope they do, anyway.


That would be my guess as well.
I'm most likely going to opt for the base model and just endure having only a few games installed at once as I've come to realise that while having loads of space is nice the game in reality just sit there unplayed so am I really benefiting?
I think even being restricted to just 5 games wouldn't be all that problematic if we can still download in the background while playing whatever it is I'm playing most at the time.

I'm not sure why but I kind of also miss having to defrag my drive to get it all nice and organised from time to time as even if it had zero effect it always made it feel like it just sped things up :shifty: .

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Monkey Man » Wed Feb 05, 2020 2:34 pm

As I've said before I hope they'll allow external HDD's for Storage. Then you have to transfer the game to the SSD to play it.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Jenuall » Wed Feb 05, 2020 2:56 pm

Yeah a larger but slower "long term" storage combined with a smaller high speed drive for playing the games would be ideal. If they are clever they could work out some interesting mechanisms for swapping out the data from the slower drive to the faster drive in a dynamic way to maximise speed but also reduce the amount required on the SSD at any one time.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Monkey Man » Thu Feb 06, 2020 8:38 am

Something that may help with download sizes is Machine Learning which James Gwertzman, head of Microsoft Game Stack (previously known as Playfab before MS bought them), recently talked about -

Gwertzman: You were talking about machine learning and content generation. I think that’s going to be interesting. One of the studios inside Microsoft has been experimenting with using ML models for asset generation. It’s working scarily well. To the point where we’re looking at shipping really low-res textures and having ML models uprez the textures in real time. You can’t tell the difference between the hand-authored high-res texture and the machine-scaled-up low-res texture, to the point that you may as well ship the low-res texture and let the machine do it.

Journalist: Can you do that on the hardware without install time?

Gwertzman: Not even install time. Run time.

Journalist: To clarify, you’re talking about real time, moving around the 3D space, level of detail style?

Gwertzman: Like literally not having to ship massive 2K by 2K textures. You can ship tiny textures.

Journalist: Are you saying they’re generated on the fly as you move around the scene, or they’re generated ahead of time?

Gwertzman: The textures are being uprezzed in real time.

Journalist: So you can fit on one blu-ray.

Gwertzman: The download is way smaller, but there’s no appreciable difference in game quality. Think of it more like a magical compression technology. That’s really magical. It takes a huge R&D budget. I look at things like that and say — either this is the next hard thing to compete on, hiring data scientists for a game studio, or it’s a product opportunity. We could be providing technologies like this to everyone to level the playing field again.

Journalist: Where does the source data set for that come from? Do you take every texture from every game that ships under Microsoft Game Studios?

Gwertzman: In this case, it only works by training the models on very specific sets. One genre of game. There’s no universal texture map. That would be kind of magical. It’s more like, if you train it on specific textures and then you — it works with those, but it wouldn’t work with a whole different set.

Journalist: So you still need an artist to create the original set.

Journalist: Are there any legal considerations around what you feed into the model?

Gwertzman: It’s especially good for photorealism, because that adds tons of data. It may not work so well for a fantasy art style. But my point is that I think the fact that that’s a technology now — game development has always been hard in terms of the sheer number of disciplines you have to master. Art, physics, geography, UI, psychology, operant conditioning. All these things we have to master. Then we add backend services and latency and multiplayer, and that’s hard enough. Then we added microtransactions and economy management and running your own retail store inside your game. Now we’re adding data science and machine learning. The barrier seems to be getting higher and higher.

That’s where I come in. At heart, Microsoft is a productivity company. Our employee badge says on the back, the company mission is to help people achieve more. How do we help developers achieve more? That’s what we’re trying to figure out.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by jawa4 » Thu Feb 06, 2020 11:54 am

I'm intrigued by the idea that you could create small textures and they could be blown up to bigger, detailed textures. I dunno... that just doesn't seem logical, or possible. I'd guess that code will assess the low-res texture and enhance it on-the-fly, but I'd imagine that the results would be variable. The code could be developed to recognise, say, leaves and enhance them into foliage, but I suspect that this could result in textures that feel too familiar across games.

As with any new idea, it'll be interesting to see how this improves, though.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Jenuall » Thu Feb 06, 2020 12:20 pm

I mean the sort of stuff that we are seeing people achieve using ESRGAN and the like to upscale low resolution content from older games into something much more detailed is amazing - but it takes a lot of effort to train and achieve consistently good results.

There's definitely scope for some of this to become mainstream and anything that helps get download sizes down is a win for me!

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Peter Crisp » Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:38 pm

It's the same texture but it's far away.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Poser » Thu Feb 06, 2020 4:38 pm

Finally: that thing in films when they take four pixels' worth of CCTV footage and reconstruct someone's entire face with it is a reality :datass:

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Jenuall » Thu Feb 06, 2020 5:07 pm

ENHANCE!

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by DarkRula » Thu Feb 06, 2020 6:03 pm

"Zoom and enhance cliche" *PING*

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by rinks » Thu Feb 06, 2020 6:46 pm

Then the AI goes mental and puts dicks on everything.

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Peter Crisp
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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Peter Crisp » Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:34 pm

With about 9 months to go now until the next gen launches when is everyone expecting the big advertising to kick-off?
I assume they won't want to leave it too late but at the same it'll be hugely expensive so the later they leave it the more bang for the buck they can get. I can see small stuff like Digital Foundry hardware inspections in the next 3 months and then a small start leading to a 4 month blitz.

It's going to be quite the advertising battle with both launching at roughly the same time.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by DarkRula » Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:59 pm

I can't see anything major happening until after E3, once we know exactly what we're getting from both machines.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by KK » Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:30 pm

Currently testing out Xbox 360 and Xbox One games that work on Xbox Series X:

Xbox Series X: Phil Spencer Says "Tons" Of Backwards Compatible Games Working Already

"Relative to the Xbox One--the first codename for that was Durango back in the original days--we are so far ahead in terms of when we have take home [consoles] and this thing being in the home," Spencer explained. "That's why I tweeted it out, because the team has just done such incredible work to get us into a position where this far ahead of launch we're actually at home and I can actually use it as a primary console"

"It's obviously quite a bit faster than the Xbox One," added Spencer when referring to the Series X's UI. "And even sometimes when things run a little bit faster there's some UI things that you need to be aware of."

On top of standard usage, Spencer explained that he's part of the process in compiling a list of games currently compatible with the Series X. It's expected to play all Xbox One titles as well as its supported list of Xbox 360 games, so part of Spencer's testing is booting up numerous different ones and seeing if they currently work. Considering anyone can see what he's currently playing, it's easy to tell which have passed the test.

"I'm trying it. It's in active development, sometimes it reboots. Not all the games today are completely compatible. We're working through our list of approved games on it. You can see what I'm playing; there's tons of games that work," Spencer said.

Even in this early state, Spencer allude to some performance enhancements that the Xbox Series X shows purely because of the hardware it's using. Loading times, for example, will be immediately affected by its use of SSD technology--something which doesn't need work to show its benefits.

"If I load a little faster into my Destiny strike than you, that's maybe my box," Spencer adding jokingly.

The Xbox Series X is expected to launch later this year, with Microsoft already confirming that it won't have strict exclusives for the foreseeable future

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox- ... 0-6473541/

Is original Xbox title BC being dumped? I’d like to see it continue, myself. Stuff like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory still looks really good...though a new SC would be better.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Photek » Thu Feb 13, 2020 9:00 am

Pretty sure it was confirmed all games that currently work on X1 would work on Series X including all BC titles.

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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by more heat than light » Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:48 pm

Yeah, but what about Kinect games?

:capnscotty:

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Moggy
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PostRe: Xbox Series X - Power Your Dreams. Coming Autumn 2020. Mystery Port is for Expandable Storage?
by Moggy » Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:52 pm

more heat than light wrote:Yeah, but what about Kinect games?

:capnscotty:


strawberry float Kinect, MS will not have true BC until the full Steel Battalion controller is working on their new console.


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