Windows Central’s Jez Corden has taken it upon himself to reassure gamers that backward compatibility will be retained at a hardware level without even needing emulation. Corden said as much during the latest episode of the Xbox Two Podcast. Here’s the relevant quote:
I can pretty much confirm - I’m like maybe two or three sources off writing a report on this, but the next Xbox is like 100% or 99.999% recurring running your console games, because I’ve seen that fear out there a lot at the moment, where it’s like, oh my god, the next Xbox won’t run console games. It’s only going to be a PC. It’s going to be like the ROG Ally. It’s going to be made by ASUS, because Tom put in his article something like, “I believe Microsoft will still make their own hardware.” I mean, they’ve said they will. The thing is, Xbox has said a lot of things in the past. When Tom says, “I believe they’re going to make it,” that exposes an issue with Microsoft’s messaging. People don’t really trust what they say anymore because they’ve gone back on their word so many times.
But, you know, which is again why I’ve been told by a bunch of people the next Xbox has the silicon for running Xbox One and Series X and 360 games natively. At least what’s in the backwards compatibility program. And then everything you own on XB1 and Series X and S, those will all be playable on the next Microsoft Xbox. But I would not be surprised if there is an Asus ROG gaming all-in-one that also is just a PC, like Tom said. And to be fair, Tom was one of the first people, I think, who officially reported on the idea of third-party Xbox hardware. I didn’t believe it at the time, but the more I looked into it, I was like, “Oh [ __ ] yeah, he’s right.” So, shout out to Tom for that.
Jez and Tom have different inside knowledge than us and I think the “problem with Xbox messaging” is just for them and those of us who listen to them. Publicly they’ve only talked about making hardware for next-gen.
Problem with that is for a lot of people who are not tuned in, it’s more “Xbox ded” than “working on next-gen hardware”. I’m not sure that has cut through.
For me, I don’t trust a word from anyone until it’s officially shown as a fact.
For me, the issue is that Xbox has changed publicly announced plans before, that it can be used to spread as much FUD as possible. When things they haven’t revealed yet leaks.
So even though Sarah talked about their next Xbox and confirmed it to be in the works. Hearing rumors about cancelling the native handheld and working with OEMs from leaks.
Let’s people spread as much disinformation as possible about what Xbox is planning.
I can’t help but laugh every time this narrative is singularly-focused on Xbox. I guess I need to start bringing out those old Insomniac tweets, or “we believe in generations”, and all the other lies Sony knowingly told customers to get them to buy a PS4 or PS5, only to release said game on PC, or Xbox, or Switch in some cases.
Anyway, in relation to the article… I feel like this is the most obvious “no shit” there is, given that Xbox has already literally put their money where their mouths are, twice, in regards to games preservation. They’re also already proven masters of emulation when we tackled not one, but two entire architecture changes. But sure, because everyone else is irrationally fearful, we have to feed into it.
Edit: quoting worked weird, this isn’t Staffy’s words quoted.
We all know that it will be very rare(impossible), for anyone with a big enough platform to call out Sony’s lies.
Because their early access to PlayStation, depends on them not making Sony look bad. The second they fo Sony burns them and removes all early access, which hurts the bottom line of the companies who depend on making that content.
But mostly it’s just favoritism, because they grew up with Sony as their default.
Yeah that same sentence stuck out to me. What I’ve perceived as happening is people make up their own expectations, or take a report from an insider as gospel, and then when something different happens, they act like Xbox actually promised the thing they expected.
“Case by case” is the prototypical example. Everyone came up with their own private definition of what they thought that meant, and when inevitably something happens that isn’t their preference, “Phil lied!”
So, AMD leaker Kepler has weigh in on Xbox’s future plans. Saying AMD will be used again(YES! The obvious is obvious!), but apparently he thinks it will be another console.
Without the Xbox and PC merger, so no Steam intergration apparently.
Well we just have to see at this point, if the Xbox telling us that they’re working on bringing the best of both together and then showing off their work like 5 to 6 months later is lie./s
Also, Jez agreed to that being the likely case, likely contradicting himself.
At this point, i just have outright ignore any insider info, the one folk i actually trust in regards to actual info is jeff grub, but even he makes mistakes and is not afraid to admit them compared to others.
That would also contradict Microsoft as Brad Smith put out a blog post back in early 2022 that all the sma principles of Windows in regards to other vendor payment and communication systems, would come to the next gen Xbox marketplace, including the console.
It would also make the forward compatibility team kind of redundant if they’re not working on getting emulation working on future hardware that likely won’t be running the same version of the Xbox OS.
If next Xbox has the hardware to guarantee BC they still really need to figure out software BC on the PC ecosystem/handhelds as well as get x86 games to run on the Xbox home console to really unify it all under 1 concept. They sell it all as Xbox but for the messaging to be coherent it needs to work the same everywhere.
I’m guessing the handhelds will get as much BC support through streaming early on until they get a software solution working and they probably expect most people to be playing using Gamepass anyway and most of those games will all work natively anyway.
The big thing though is running Steam games and the like on the home console. Unless of course, and that could become a differentiator, at least for the time being, but what if the home console is “Xbox” and the handhelds and 3rd party devices are “Xbox PC” and only the Xbox PC gets access to all storefronts? That was MS expands to maybe more markets all the while protecting their royalties and accessory sales from the normal Xbox console. Like having your cake and eating it too!
This is why this “news” feels like “well, duh” to me - short of Xbox going ARM, the new Xbox is almost certainly going to be an x86 based system just like the Series and One consoles, so of course “hardware level backwards compatibility” is a given
Even if it was running pure Windows (rather than the customised Xbox OS version) it would likely only need a few bits virtualised to play current Xbox games (so still almost completely “hardware based BC”) and we know the older 360/original BC is virtual machine / emulation based anyway.
It feels like so many “insiders” just spout obvious stuff that sounds new to those who don’t understand the technical parts so they can say they were “in the know” when it’s finally revealed.
Who knows whether it’ll be a pure console, a console with some bastardised version of PC stores or an Xbox / Windows combined OS similar to the Ally but with improved ability to play all Xbox games - whatever it is, it’s almost certainly going to be x86 based which means Jez’s comments will be correct…
Yep, it’s pretty annoying. It’s still like two years away at least, and so much can change too. I’m sure that if possible MS would love to have Steam on it and what not, I do too, but nothing is a given or even set in stone yet.
It’s the same with the leaked GTA VI gameplay two years ago or so, it showed stuff that really might not end up in the game and fans are going to give the studio shit for it if that indeed happens , I have no doubts. I’m not expecting a damn thing of the next Xbox, except that there will be one and that’s it.
I wonder if this means Xbox is serious about going all out for power , looking for a different sort of chipset to attain those levels of power so BC can only be done via hardware like PS2/3
Hopefully, we find out more info early next year. Whatever the case, it’s just so nice to see talk of Xbox still making and working hard on its console.
Xbox can mean a lot of things to people, to me it means a console and a console is what put Xbox on the map and why I believe most of its fanbase came from.
Hopefully, with this news, It means that Xbox isn’t going the standard SOC route for the Next Box and is really upping the anti for power
Console chips are APUs today and that’s not changing, as you’ve been told and never provided any counterpoint to present your argument. When are you going to actually start listening to the facts provided to you, or is an actual conversation not what you’re looking for?
There’s a fundamental lack of understanding here, as presented by your “arguments” in the DF thread, and any time you’re presented with verifiable facts, you hand waive them away. Did you know that the Xbox 360 originally wasn’t fabricated as an SoC, but the Slim model was the first gaming device to introduce an SoC (yes, they beat Apple by almost a year) and yet there was no performance loss in the transition (in fact, there were efficiency and performance gains)? Like I said, you really need to start listening to people and not talking past them if you want to stay here.
I don’t like your condescending attitude, more so when people like you are so quick to point out that Xbox is now not the traditional console like SONY
Who knows what Xbox is up to, we could have well have a different manufacturer for the CPU to the GPU, and that’s why Xbox needs BC at a silicon level now that seems separate from the main CPU/GPU
You are also a little wrong about the 1st SOC. SEGA was the one of 1st to do that with the DC when at the time of PSO Yuji Naka confirmed SEGA had made the SOC for DC hardware where later on SEGA was trying to flog it off to the likes of Pace Skyboxes, even rumoured to the Xbox OG system before ending up in Mushiking The King of Beetles arcade boards or one of SEGA’s kids arcade boards anway.
