Microsoft Xbox Series X | S OT - Power Your Dreams, update: FTC case unredacted documents leaked, including XSX mid-generation refresh, new gyro/haptic-enabled controller, and next-generation plans for 2028

[JPDunks4]

50 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Uh, Phil’s gone off the deep end with that.  The highest end PC versions today are held back by needing to be designed for scaled back machines without SSD’s, antiquated Jaguar CPUs, and low amounts of RAM.  We don’t know where game design would be today if those weren’t the minimum specs targeted.

 

In other words, it’s actually the lowest console specs that are holding PC back.  
 

If he believes Lockhart won’t, then we’ll have to see what happens.  But in today’s market?  It’s a straight up falsehood.

 

All this chest beating about SSD’s now is particularly ironic when PC gamers have been waiting for years for it to be an assumed given.

Well won't PC's be the lowest common denominator before the Lockhart when it comes to game design? 

 

Unless high speed SSD's are the min spec for PC's in the next few years.

[crispy4000]

31 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

Well won't PC's be the lowest common denominator before the Lockhart when it comes to game design? 

 

Unless high speed SSD's are the min spec for PC's in the next few years.

SSDs will inevitably become minimum spec for AAA development on PC once the current gen consoles are dropped by devs.

 

Bigger question is how quickly suggested specs will shoot past 4 Teraflop GPUs.  We’re already seeing some cross gen games recommend 1070’s.

[JPDunks4]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

SSDs will inevitably become minimum spec for AAA development on PC once the current gen consoles are dropped by devs.

 

Bigger question is how quickly suggested specs will shoot past 4 Teraflop GPUs.  We’re already seeing some cross gen games recommend 1070’s.

 

The article was specifically asking about the Xbox One's though, and Microsofts continued support for at least another year or whatever it is.

 

All Xbox 1st party also releases on PC, so their 1st party games will all be supporting regular HDD's and lower end PC specs for at least another year or so as well.  So I think that probably played a big role in their decisions not to have XSX or XSS exclusives for a year or so.  

 

Also, they don't want to abandon a huge number of hardware owners on both PC and Xbox that are Game Pass Subs, and suddenly tell them, yeah, your subscriptions now require a big investment in hardware to still carry the same value.  You now no longer get MS 1st Party games day 1 unless you buy the latest and greatest hardware.

[crispy4000]

8 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

 

The article was specifically asking about the Xbox One's though, and Microsofts continued support for at least another year or whatever it is.

 

All Xbox 1st party also releases on PC, so their 1st party games will all be supporting regular HDD's and lower end PC specs for at least another year or so as well.  So I think that probably played a big role in their decisions not to have XSX or XSS exclusives for a year or so.  

 

Also, they don't want to abandon a huge number of hardware owners on both PC and Xbox that are Game Pass Subs, and suddenly tell them, yeah, your subscriptions now require a big investment in hardware to still carry the same value.  You now no longer get MS 1st Party games day 1 unless you buy the latest and greatest hardware.

 

All makes sense from Microsoft's market perspective... but none of it is justification to say that high end PC's haven't been held back by lower end machines.  It only reinforces it.

[Spork3245]

The real question is “where do SATA SSD fit in?”. It’s not as simple as SSD being a requirement, but certain types need to be specified, and I can already tell you that the majority of PC gamers do not have m.2s making up most of their SSD gaming storage.

[crispy4000]

19 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

The real question is “where do SATA SSD fit in?”. It’s not as simple as SSD being a requirement, but certain types need to be specified, and I can already tell you that the majority of PC gamers do not have m.2s making up most of their SSD gaming storage.

Could end up varying game by game.  I don't think we'd see something like Ratchet does working off a SATA drive.

 

But I do expect consoles to quickly set PC minimums for SSDs by the end of the cross-gen period.

 

[Duderino]

There will come a point where supporting disc HDDs will become prohibitively expensive for developers of AAA games.  The writing is on the wall if you’ve followed postmortems this gen, such as Spider-Man’s.  The time cost to optimize for a mechanical HDD is already quite the investment today.  That is not going to be sustainable for long.
 

I agree with Crispy, many developers will drop HDD support like a rock as soon as they get the go-ahead to ditch the PS4/XBO.

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

Could end up varying game by game.  I don't think we'd see something like Ratchet does working off a SATA drive.

 

That's exactly what I'm saying: SSD requirements will vary by type and minimum requirements won't just be listed as "SSD required". I kinda don't think that a SATA SSD would meet any minimum spec, tbh (500-560MBps sata vs 2500-3500MBps m.2). The new XBOX is using a PCIE 3.0 m.2 (afaik), which is already well beyond what most PC gamers have for most of their storage. Personally, I have 3.5tb of SATA SSD space, and a single 500gb PCIE 3.0 m.2. I have a feeling that there's a lot of PC gamers in a similar boat. However, if m.2 prices finally start dropping, then my concerns are moot  

[Spork3245]

But seriously, remember the days we were all buying 2x WD 10,000rpm Velociraptor HDDs and putting them in a RAID 0 set-up and being so proud of games loading in 45 seconds instead of 60?  

[TomCat]

9 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

There’s at least 6. (XBO, PS4, PSPro, X1X, PS5, XSX)

 

And I wouldn’t call supporting the baseline XBO and PS4 in the cross-gen period easy.  We’ve already seen some optimization shortfalls on them as the result of priority given to X/Pro.

why are you talking about ps's  I was only talking about the xbox ecco system.   

 

 

 

With both the ps and sexbox having dedicated controllers for the ssd's for on the fly compression  pc  drives arent fast enough to keep up. It will change but we dont know how soon that will be. In the mean time You could just add alot more ram as a substitution.

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, TomCat said:

why are you talking about ps's  I was only talking about the xbox ecco system. 

 

I'm bringing it up because the vast majority of developers aren't making games exclusive to the xbox ecosystem.

There's so many console SKUs these days, more than ever to juggle in a transition to a new gen.  Some of those ports will inevitably not get the proper TLC, which is typically an advantage consoles have with static specs instead of a continuum.

 

1 hour ago, TomCat said:

With both the ps and sexbox having dedicated controllers for the ssd's for on the fly compression  pc  drives arent fast enough to keep up. It will change but we dont know how soon that will be. In the mean time You could just add alot more ram as a substitution.

 

We don't have a point of comparison yet for how different a typical PC M2 drive will perform relative to PS5 or XSX.  The issue largely isn't that they're not fast enough, it's the I/O processes in communicating with the drives where consoles could blow past PC in the short term.  It'd likely only be a problem for next-gen only games though.

 

More RAM should be able to brute force things more or less, but we still don't know just how much more ram would be needed for it to match the news consoles with UE5 and such.

[TomCat]

18 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I'm bringing it up because the vast majority of developers aren't making games exclusive to the xbox ecosystem.

There's so many console SKUs these days, more than ever in the transition to the new gen.  Some of those ports will inevitably not get the proper TLC , which is typically an advantage consoles have with static specs instead of a continuum.

 

 

We don't really have a point of comparison yet for how different a typical PC M2 drive will perform relative to PS5 or XSX.  It's not the issue that they're not fast enough, it's the I/O processes in communicating with SSDs that the consoles could blow past PC in the short term.  It'd only be a problem for next-gen only games though.

 

More RAM should be able to brute force things more or less, but we still don't know just how much more ram would be needed for it with UE5 and such.

lol you are funny   for the first time in gaming history the upgraded consoles are using the same architecture x86  Porting things will be easier then ever.    Also we dont need a comparison  of pc's ssd's and  xbox or ps5  ssd cause we already know the consoles will be faster cause of the hardware compression  something the new  pc    pcie4  m.2 drives will be missing

 

Man I just realized you said you are smarter the Phil Spencer  lol

[Xbob42]

My 64GB of RAM is ready for the frontlines in any case!

[crispy4000]

37 minutes ago, TomCat said:

lol you are funny   for the first time in gaming history the upgraded consoles are using the same architecture x86  Porting things will be easier then ever.    Also we dont need a comparison  of pc's ssd's and  xbox or ps5  ssd cause we already know the consoles will be faster cause of the hardware compression  something the new  pc    pcie4  m.2 drives will be missing

 

Man I just realized you said you are smarter the Phil Spencer  lol

 

We see a fair bit of of Xbox One S/PS4 games running poorly today.  Even unacceptably poor with a game like Control.  Porting is easy, porting well is hard and will continue to get harder for the current gen.

 

We absolutely need a comparison to know how much PC could have to brute force.
 

Smart people can say stupid things on occasion.  He’s getting plenty of blowback for his comment elsewhere.  It’s blatantly false if you consider all those SATA SSDs that never got taken advantage of past faster loading.

 

[legend]

On 7/10/2020 at 7:37 AM, ManUtdRedDevils said:

Are Xbox Series X developers being held back by Xbox One?

 

"Yes, every developer is going to find a line and say that this is the hardware that I am going to support"

 

So is Phil saying it's okay if developers draw a line and say they won't support Lockheart because it's too underpowered for what they want to do? Because that is what happens in the great "diversity" of PC hardware. It's called "minimum requirements" and it varies by game.

[skillzdadirecta]

18 minutes ago, legend said:

 

"Yes, every developer is going to find a line and say that this is the hardware that I am going to support"

 

So is Phil saying it's okay if developers draw a line and say they won't support Lockheart because it's too underpowered for what they want to do? Because that is what happens in the great "diversity" of PC hardware. It's called "minimum requirements" and it varies by game.

 

I don't know... what I DO know is that the most widely used graphics card in PC gaming is the GTX 1060 (according to Steam) which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is equivalent to an X1X? So does having such an underpowered card be the defacto baseline of PC gaming hold back all of the PC gamers with the Suck-and-Fuck-Monster-Rigs-with-prostate-tickling-action? The Lockhart will be more powerful than a GTX 1060, will come with an SSD standard and will be better optimized.

 

It seems to me that by the logic being displayed in this topic, what's "holding back gaming" isn't consoles (which lets be real, subsidizes a lot of gaming development) but PC gamers who won't or can't upgrade their machines 

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

I don't know... what I DO know is that the most widely used graphics card in PC gaming is the GTX 1060 (according to Steam) which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is equivalent to an X1X? So does having such an underpowered card be the defacto baseline of PC gaming hold back all of the PC gamers with the Suck-and-Fuck-Monster-Rigs-with-prostate-tickling-action? The Lockhart will be more powerful than a GTX 1060, will come with an SSD standard and will be better optimized.

 

It seems to me that by the logic being displayed in this topic, what's "holding back gaming" isn't consoles (which lets be real, subsidizes a lot of gaming development) but PC gamers who won't or can't upgrade their machines 

 

 

 

Hey man, but that 2080 TI has seen a .06% increase in the last month

[SimpleG]

2 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I don't know... what I DO know is that the most widely used graphics card in PC gaming is the GTX 1060 (according to Steam) which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is equivalent to an X1X?

Between a 1060/1070

 

2 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

So does having such an underpowered card be the defacto baseline of PC gaming hold back all of the PC gamers

Yes

 

2 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

e Suck-and-Fuck-Monster-Rigs-with-prostate-tickling-action?

Real gamers have the titty twist add on

 

19 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

The Lockhart will be more powerful than a GTX 1060, will come with an SSD standard and will be better optimized.

 

I would certainly hope so its considering the age of a 1060

 

2 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

It seems to me that by the logic being displayed in this topic, what's "holding back gaming" isn't consoles (which lets be real, subsidizes a lot of gaming development) but PC gamers who won't or can't upgrade their machines 

[crispy4000]

3 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

I don't know... what I DO know is that the most widely used graphics card in PC gaming is the GTX 1060 (according to Steam) which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is equivalent to an X1X? So does having such an underpowered card be the defacto baseline of PC gaming hold back all of the PC gamers with the Suck-and-Fuck-Monster-Rigs-with-prostate-tickling-action? The Lockhart will be more powerful than a GTX 1060, will come with an SSD standard and will be better optimized.

 

It seems to me that by the logic being displayed in this topic, what's "holding back gaming" isn't consoles (which lets be real, subsidizes a lot of gaming development) but PC gamers who won't or can't upgrade their machines 

 

Consoles set the baseline because developers design games by their standards generally.

 

Since devs are expected today to support the Xbox One S and base PS4, a PC gamer could get away with an old Jaguar CPU this entire generation if they were okay with 30FPS.

The question here should be if a modern ~4 teraflop GPU from AMD would similarly be able to last you an entire new generation.  

 

With Lockhart, it's really not about the high end.  It's about how much optimization work will be needed to keep that low spec GPU (by today's standards) relevant 5 years from now.  Or how shitty future games could or look or run on it if the effort was marginal. 

[Brian]

4 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

I don't know... what I DO know is that the most widely used graphics card in PC gaming is the GTX 1060 (according to Steam) which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is equivalent to an X1X? So does having such an underpowered card be the defacto baseline of PC gaming hold back all of the PC gamers with the Suck-and-Fuck-Monster-Rigs-with-prostate-tickling-action? The Lockhart will be more powerful than a GTX 1060, will come with an SSD standard and will be better optimized.

 

It seems to me that by the logic being displayed in this topic, what's "holding back gaming" isn't consoles (which lets be real, subsidizes a lot of gaming development) but PC gamers who won't or can't upgrade their machines 

 

 

PC gamers are lazy too? 
 

[Raggit]

^ I only upgraded my i5 2500k this January. 

 

[legend]

5 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

I don't know... what I DO know is that the most widely used graphics card in PC gaming is the GTX 1060 (according to Steam) which, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is equivalent to an X1X? So does having such an underpowered card be the defacto baseline of PC gaming hold back all of the PC gamers with the Suck-and-Fuck-Monster-Rigs-with-prostate-tickling-action? The Lockhart will be more powerful than a GTX 1060, will come with an SSD standard and will be better optimized.

 

It seems to me that by the logic being displayed in this topic, what's "holding back gaming" isn't consoles (which lets be real, subsidizes a lot of gaming development) but PC gamers who won't or can't upgrade their machines 

 

 

 

I'm not sure what the relative power difference is to a X1X (gets tricky because of feature set), but it is better than a base Xbone/PS4. Hell, my 980 which I'm going to upgrade this year once Nvidia finally releases HDMI 2.1 video cards is better than a base Xbone/PS4. At launch, neither PC gamers nor console gamers will upgrade at all once and so it will be the previous generation that sets the baseline. Consequently, Lockhart won't be holding anything back *at the start.*

 

What's  worrisome is if sets the baseline for the rest of the generation. I would much rather the baseline for the rest of the generation be XSX and PS5, *not* the substantially weaker Lockhart.

 

That is, unless MS is perfectly happy with developers not supporting Lockhart in the future, hence my comment. But I find that hard to believe.

[crispy4000]

49 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I'm not sure what the relative power difference is to a X1X (gets tricky because of feature set), but it is better than a base Xbone/PS4. Hell, my 980 which I'm going to upgrade this year once Nvidia finally releases HDMI 2.1 video cards is better than a base Xbone/PS4. At launch, neither PC gamers nor console gamers will upgrade at all once and so it will be the previous generation that sets the baseline. Consequently, Lockhart won't be holding anything back *at the start.*

 

What's  worrisome is if sets the baseline for the rest of the generation. I would much rather the baseline for the rest of the generation be XSX and PS5, *not* the substantially weaker Lockhart.

 

That is, unless MS is perfectly happy with developers not supporting Lockhart in the future, hence my comment. But I find that hard to believe.

I can't imagine Lockhart will be the target for AAA development next-gen.  Developers will design for Series X / PS5 and then try to salvage what they can for Lockhart.  Similar to what's happened to the S once the X came out.

 

The bigger issue comes when Series XX/PS5 Pro comes out.  If Lockhart sells decently, I don't think it will be dropped.  Just dragged along with increasingly bad port jobs.

[skillzdadirecta]

37 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I'm not sure what the relative power difference is to a X1X (gets tricky because of feature set), but it is better than a base Xbone/PS4. Hell, my 980 which I'm going to upgrade this year once Nvidia finally releases HDMI 2.1 video cards is better than a base Xbone/PS4. At launch, neither PC gamers nor console gamers will upgrade at all once and so it will be the previous generation that sets the baseline. Consequently, Lockhart won't be holding anything back *at the start.*

 

What's  worrisome is if sets the baseline for the rest of the generation. I would much rather the baseline for the rest of the generation be XSX and PS5, *not* the substantially weaker Lockhart.

 

That is, unless MS is perfectly happy with developers not supporting Lockhart in the future, hence my comment. But I find that hard to believe.

One, we don't know how much "weaker" the Lockhart will be than the other skus for the next gen consoles... have the final Lockhart specs been officially announced yet? Aren't we getting a bit ahead of ourselves?

 

Two, all of those PC gamers with 1060's and standard Hard-drives will upgrade their cards and get SSD's all of a sudden? Why haven't they done so  already? 

 

A lot of clairvoyants in this topic that seem to be able to peer into the future. 

[crispy4000]

38 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

One, we don't know how much "weaker" the Lockhart will be than the other skus for the next gen consoles... have the final Lockhart specs been officially announced yet? Aren't we getting a bit ahead of ourselves?

~3x weaker than Series X in teraflop count according to the rumors/leaks.

 

38 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Two, all of those PC gamers with 1060's and standard Hard-drives will upgrade their cards and get SSD's all of a sudden? Why haven't they done so  already?

SSDs haven’t become minimum spec or anything close to it, yet.  
 

1060’s are more or less substitutes for the X and Pro’s GPUs.  They’re still current mid-range cards.  So yes, we‘ll see more people upgrading from them when they no longer occupy that space.

 

38 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

A lot of clairvoyants in this topic that seem to be able to peer into the future. 

We technically haven’t even seen Lockhart 100% confirmed yet.  The talk claiming its existence and claiming these specs are one in the same.

[legend]

44 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

I can't imagine Lockhart will be the target for AAA development next-gen.  Developers will design for Series X / PS5 and then try to salvage what they can for Lockhart.  Similar to what's happened to the S once the X came out.

 

The bigger issue comes when Series XX/PS5 Pro comes out.  If Lockhart sells decently, I don't think it will be dropped.  Just dragged along with increasingly bad port jobs.

 

I hope that is the outcome if anything, as shitty as that would be for Lockhart owners!

 

35 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

One, we don't know how much "weaker" the Lockhart will be than the other skus for the next gen consoles... have the final Lockhart specs been officially announced yet? Aren't we getting a bit ahead of ourselves?

 

I mean, we could refrain from discussing any topic until all information is completely available and certain, but that's going to kill a lot of discussion on a video game message board  I also don't see anything wrong discussing things with the information we have. It's not like if they come out and show it's a stone's throw from a XSX I'd be like "Nope, I don't care, I thought it would be weaker before and that's my reality for all decisions and conclusions."

 

Quote

Two, all of those PC gamers with 1060's and standard Hard-drives will upgrade their cards and get SSD's all of a sudden? Why haven't they done so  already? 

 

I very plainly stated in my post that you quoted that PC gamers will *not* upgrade all at once (and nor will console gamers). I went on to say that Lockhart will not hold anything back at the start of this next generation. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

 

 

Let me make a corollary. In various other threads, I've expressed how enthusiastic and excited I am that PS5  and XSX are going all in on very high performance NVMe SSDs and what that means about bringing the bar up on that tech for everything. It will force PCs to also improve on this, because they actually will be behind for a bit of time. That's great and it's an example of how consoles setting a baseline of something better brings us all up, including PCs.

 

That is exactly the same reason why Lockhart worries me about pulling  other aspects down.

 

[JPDunks4]

What if...

 

Lockhart is only available to purchase through Xbox All Access, and in 2 or 3 years, when the payment or whatever it is is done, they have you upgrade to the Series X that you trade in the Lockhart for and continue the Xbox All Access on a new plan. That way they plan to phase out Series S's out in a 2/3 year timespan.

 

So that way the Series S is a stop gap for early adopters to get into the ecosystem for like $25 a month for Xbox Gamepass Ultimate and a Series S.  They build Game Pass subscribers up huge by having such a low cost of entry to get into Next Gen gaming.  Then when the time is up, you can keep the Series S as a xCloud Machine, or streaming box.

 

Microsoft said they want to try to emulate a phone plan, where you generally have a 18 month or 2 year contract then upgrade.  Could this possibly be a strategy they want to implement?

 

[crispy4000]

41 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

What if...

 

Lockhart is only available to purchase through Xbox All Access, and in 2 or 3 years, when the payment or whatever it is is done, they have you upgrade to the Series X that you trade in the Lockhart for and continue the Xbox All Access on a new plan. That way they plan to phase out Series S's out in a 2/3 year timespan.

 

So that way the Series S is a stop gap for early adopters to get into the ecosystem for like $25 a month for Xbox Gamepass Ultimate and a Series S.  They build Game Pass subscribers up huge by having such a low cost of entry to get into Next Gen gaming.  Then when the time is up, you can keep the Series S as a xCloud Machine, or streaming box.

 

Microsoft said they want to try to emulate a phone plan, where you generally have a 18 month or 2 year contract then upgrade.  Could this possibly be a strategy they want to implement?

 

 

Microsoft already finances every SKU they release now without trade-ups.
 

If the whole plan was to push people to step up to a different monthly plan after the cross-gen period ends, why not just do it with the X1X as the segway machine instead?

[JPDunks4]

10 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Microsoft already finances every SKU they release now without trade-ups.
 

If the whole plan was to push people to upgrade monthly plans after the cross-gen period ends... why not just do it with the X1X as the segway machine instead?

1 - They introduced Xbox All Access fairly late into the generation, and never made it a primary part of their strategy in selling consoles.  In a recent interview with Phil or someone else at Microsoft, they stated they now have a bunch of other retailers on board to execute this, where as before I think it was very limited.  They also stated they wanted to shift the way consoles were sold to be very similar to another popular electronic Device.  So it just makes me think they are going to lean more heavily into Xbox All Access to kick off this gen.

 

2 - The Series S I assume will still be far far cheaper to manufacture than the Series X.  So if they are looking to subsidize that SKU, it's less of a direct impact in the short term.  And the monthly fee might be something closer to $35 or $40 a month, which may not be as appealing as a $25 a month fee.  

 

I have no idea if this would be something they do, but its one way I could see them moving consoles to a required mid gen refresh to keep the tech constantly moving rather than remain stagnant for 7-8 years.  As well as a way to try to dramatically try and grow Game Pass Subscriptions and get more people into that ecosystem.

 

 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, JPDunks4 said:

1 - They introduced Xbox All Access fairly late into the generation, and never made it a primary part of their strategy in selling consoles.  In a recent interview with Phil or someone else at Microsoft, they stated they now have a bunch of other retailers on board to execute this, where as before I think it was very limited.  They also stated they wanted to shift the way consoles were sold to be very similar to another popular electronic Device.  So it just makes me think they are going to lean more heavily into Xbox All Access to kick off this gen.

 

2 - The Series S I assume will still be far far cheaper to manufacture than the Series X.  So if they are looking to subsidize that SKU, it's less of a direct impact in the short term.  And the monthly fee might be something closer to $35 or $40 a month, which may not be as appealing as a $25 a month fee.  

 

I have no idea if this would be something they do, but its one way I could see them moving consoles to a required mid gen refresh to keep the tech constantly moving rather than remain stagnant for 7-8 years.  As well as a way to try to dramatically try and grow Game Pass Subscriptions and get more people into that ecosystem.

 

I just looked into his a bit more.  I was mistaken - they already offered an upgrade option for Xbox One S and X owners to transition to Series X.

 

S all-digital financers have to pay down 18 payments of $20 a month.  Then commit to an additional 24 payments at Series X's financing.

X1X financers have to pay down 12 payments of $31 a month.  Then commit to an additional 24 payments at Series X's financing.

 

The additional 24 month thing is kind of a red flag.  Doesn't seem like much of a deal compared to someone who's brand new, unless the general financing goes longer than 2 years.

 

It's almost never is cheaper than outright purchasing.  Traditionaly, the mainstream waits for price cuts and holiday sales to jump in.  Console manufactures have a clear and established a pattern for those cuts, and only Nintendo seems to be bucking it.  Maybe that's why financing hasn't been given much attention thus far?

 

We still don't know how much Lockhart will appeal to the intended audience, but I personally doubt this approach to selling it would be the difference maker compared to a low MSRP.

[JPDunks4]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-series-x-price-phil-spencer-says-xbox-all-acc/1100-6478966/

 

Quote

Xbox Series X Price: Phil Spencer Says Xbox All Access Program Will Be "Critical" For Next-Gen

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says the mobile phone-style subscription program for the next-gen console will be a major part of Microsoft's strategy.

 

"Xbox All Access is going to be critical to both our launch for Xbox Series X as well as just the overall generation," Spencer said during a GameLab speech, as reported by GI.biz.

 

Spencer went on to say that the response to Xbox All Access in the test markets has been "great." The program is currently limited to a few countries, including the US and Australia, but Spencer said Microsoft is keen to expand the program to other places around the world.

 

"You're going to see a much broader market and retailer support for All Access," he said. "It matches a model customers use for many other devices they buy. And if you have services attached to those devices that people love, it just becomes an easier way to bring a great product to customers."

 

This article just stuck out to me when I read it.  Phones are generally upgraded every 2/3 or so years. 

 

Tying every cheaper Xbox sold to Game Pass Ultimate for a low price would be the best case for Microsoft.  I mean they could charge $20 a month for 24 months for the program for Game Pass Ultimate and a Series S.  They were willing to charge $1.00 to get people into game pass, eat a little on the $15 a month price for the sub just to get more people on board.  

 

And stating it's going to be critical for both launch and overall generation, makes me think it might be more than just a basic buying option for them, but a deeper part of the strategy. 

 

We'll see, but probably not til August.  I doubt they talk Series S at all until August based on most rumors.

 

[crispy4000]

I could see them announcing the subscription price first, before the MSRP.  Definitely a move they could make to emphasize that, and it'd keep Sony guessing for a while longer too.

[BloodyHell]

If you can’t afford a console outright, it sounds like a bad idea to be financing one. I feel the same about phones. Its usually not a deal to your benefit in the long run. like those “rent to own” scams. Local place wanted 2300$ in weekly payments over 2 years for a SWITCH.  I was shocked when I read their flyer.

 

That said, I don’t know MS’s plan, if they are willing to eat a lot of financing and development costs just to get a console in everyones homes, it might be an ok deal. But just saving and buying outright seems like its usually a far more economical idea. 
 

Not financing needless crap has long been the plot armor to my financial security. I doubt I’d break that rule for an X-box.

[JPDunks4]

14 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

If you can’t afford a console outright, it sounds like a bad idea to be financing one. I feel the same about phones. Its usually not a deal to your benefit in the long run. like those “rent to own” scams. Local place wanted 2300$ in weekly payments over 2 years for a SWITCH.  I was shocked when I read their flyer.

 

That said, I don’t know MS’s plan, if they are willing to eat a lot of financing and development costs just to get a console in everyones homes, it might be an ok deal. But just saving and buying outright seems like its usually a far more economical idea. 
 

Not financing needless crap has long been the plot armor to my financial security. I doubt I’d break that rule for an X-box.

They already have had this available.

 

An Xbox One S All Digital was $20.00 a month for 24 months.  This included Game Pass and XBL Gold.  Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass alone are $15 a month, so you are essentially paying an extra $5.00 a month for 24 months for the console itself, or $120.

 

Xbox One S with disc drive is $23.00 a month.  Xbox One X is $25.00 a month. (Who wouldn't pay the extra $5.00 for the X)

 

Xbox All Access

 

It's really not a bad deal at all if you were going to be paying $15.00 anyway for Game Pass Ultimate.  You essentially get the console at less than retail.

 

 

[BloodyHell]

1 minute ago, JPDunks4 said:

They already have had this available.

 

An Xbox One S All Digital was $20.00 a month for 24 months.  This included Game Pass and XBL Gold.  Xbox Live Gold and Gme Pass alone are $15 a month, so you are essentially paying an extra $5.00 a month for 24 months for the console itself, or $120.

 

Xbox One S with disc drive is $23.00 a month.  Xbox One X is $25.00 a month. (Who wouldn't pay the extra $5.00 for the X)

 

Xbox All Access

 

It's really not a bad deal at all if you were going to be paying $15.00 anyway for Game Pass Ultimate.  You essentially get the console at less than retail.

 

 

That really doesn’t sound bad. 
 

that’s assuming they subsidize the the next console that much. Maybe they will give the Lockhart at that price point, but the flagship box will probably be quite a bit more.