Hardware & Technical xbox games to run natively on pc in the near future?

[The Chairmaker]

Some poeple have discovered something very interesting that could shake up the gaming industry quite a bit.

Basically Microsoft appear to be testing a development build of windows 10 that allows xbox games to run directly on pc without further modification.

Doesnt take a genius to work out that this would save developers a lot of time and money. They would no longer have to port games over from the xbox console onto pc, and instead they just get it running natively on console and it will run on pc straight out of the box so to speak.

My main concern would be that this would result in many games limiting the graphical fidelity and gameplay controls solely to that of the standard of the appropriate console generation. This would badly damage the "glorious pc master race" by in effect forcing it to stick to the latest console standard, rather than pushing the frontier of gaming.

I could also see this having a major impact on the discreet pc graphics market, if games are being designed solely to run on the xbox console, then spending £500+ on a graphics card becomes somewhat redundant.
Its also noteworthy to state that both current and future xbox and playstation consoles run on AMD architecture. This may also affect future performance on NVIDIA cards if games are no longer ported to PC, and instead just developed direct for xbox and playstation.

[video=youtube;N2WntyhmdWo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2WntyhmdWo[/video]

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I don't like this.

I got sick of the Xbox eco-system. There is a reason I haven't reactivated my gold account on Live.

I've massively increased my PC gaming in the last few months, to the point where really my Xbox is just used as a media centre. (It eats much less power than my PC, so it makes sense to watch my anime there)

 

[Caramel Clown]

Since every XBox exclusive is now on PC too, aren't we there already? Yes, you have to use a terrible MS store, but still.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Its also noteworthy to state that both current and future xbox and playstation consoles run on AMD architecture.

If the Bone works like the PS4 it would mean they have a way to translate native AMD shaders to whatever else (I wouldn't rule that out completely since AMD aren't usually riding the ultra-short Lock-In Through Obscurity bus but tend to document their stuff). But since the console is a DirectX environment, shaders are probably distributed in HLSL or a slightly "cooked" version of that which can be locally optimised.

I haven't seen an in-depth analysis of the Bone yet, but it was made as an "entertainment centre" thing reminiscent of the late-'90s "multimedia" craze, so those games may actually run better on PC where they don't have to deal with the console's weird memory architecture

 

[Jon flint]

Since every XBox exclusive is now on PC too, aren't we there already? Yes, you have to use a terrible MS store, but still.

Well, if it works as it appears to, it'll mean any game that runs on xbox will run on PC, I'm thinking Red Dead Redemption 2

The only potential issue I can see is that the vast majority of gaming PCs don't have optical drives, so i guess folks are going to have to buy external ones.

 

[metatheurgist]

My main concern would be that this would result in many games limiting the graphical fidelity and gameplay controls solely to that of the standard of the appropriate console generation.

We're there already.

 

[The Chairmaker]

We're there already.

Only to a limited extent. By and large console ports still offer improved graphics options and keyboard and mouse support. I could see this pretty much dissapearing over time as it costs devs time and money. Perhaps they could offer keyboard and mouse support as part of the Delux edition for an extra £10.

I'm however trying to put myself in the shoes of the microsoft execs. They are not bothered about hardware other than the xbox console, they primarily want people using their eco system, which they can then build a walled garden around.
By getting devs to only build for xbox console and playstation architectures. They can then also make it attractive financially for publishers and developers to be exclusive purely on the xbox store when selling to both xbox console and pc.
Before you know it the big games are no longer on steam at release and are now solely available from xbox store and the playstation store for exclusive periods.
Over time this would grow the xbox store and degrade Steam .

 

[Zenith]

Sorry Chairmaker, but I disagree with your assessment.

MS tried this a couple of years ago with Quantum Break. This was one game I was looking forward to at the time, partly for the gameplay, partly for the acting credits for vocap and mocap. It also had a branching storyline where you made critical choices at a handful of times to change the direction of the game, backed up with FMV cutscenes. These cutscenes were more like a full 25-30 minute show on SyFy.

What MS did was say "Okay, if you buy the Xbox version of this, we'll give you a code to download the PC version as well"
So I created an MS account, bought the game through their store and waited for the code to come down. I had to chase up MS Xbox support 3 times before they gave me my code for the Win10 store.
Installed it, started it, and promptly wondered what had happened. It was a straight port of the Xbox version, no changes or enhancements for PC apart from using keyboard and mouse. That meant it had this smearing effect, even when you set the game to run at 1080p native. Thinking dynamic downscaling, but all the time. I had a beefy enough PC to run it smoothly, but it was limited to 30fps in-game and even then you could tell it was trying to reduce the amount of graphic detail on screen all the time.
So while I liked the game and storyline for what it was, I was disappointed with the presentation and graphic fidelity.

So that is what will happen with each and every Xbox game ported to run on PC. And I won't stand for it.

My PC can run Elite at full Ultra 1440 at over 100fps. I've got Assassin's Creed Odyssey cranked up to the maximum detail with all the effects and it never drops below 60fps.
I play PC games because I like having a multi-tasking machine. I've typed this while listening to streaming music and between jumps on DW2.

I also disagree with your assessment about MS' motives. There are plenty of people who won't touch PS/Sony, and plenty who won't touch Xbox/MS. There is even an overlap in the Venn diagram of people who won't touch either. For myself, I only have an MS account for one purpose, to buy Quantum Break. I've never used the account for anything else, and I insist on using local accounts on my Win10 PC with lockdowns to nerf the telemetry back to MS.
I have an account with PSN but that goes back to my old PS3 which is only ever used for blurays and Netflix now.

 

[Zak Gordon]

This will not be a good thing for PC gamers in general.

 

[metatheurgist]

My most subtle dislike of the "console effect" is progress bars. Standard PC trapping, apparently too cool for consoles. But many PC games don't have a proper progress bar that accurately tells you what's happening now, just the annoying totally uninformative console blinking icon in the corner.